Agentic Programme Director, London

WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients, and communities. Working at WPP means being part of a global network of more than 100,000 talented people dedicated to doing extraordinary work for our clients. We operate in over 100 countries, with corporate headquarters in New York, London and Singapore. WPP is a world leader in marketing services, with deep AI, data and technology capabilities, global presence and unrivalled creative talent. Our clients include many of the biggest companies and advertisers in the world, including approximately 300 of the Fortune Global 500. Our people are the key to our success. We’re committed to fostering a culture of creativity, belonging and continuous learning, attracting and developing the brightest talent, and providing exciting career opportunities that help our people grow.

WPP is at the forefront of the marketing and advertising industry’s largest transformation. Our Global CIO is leading a significant evolution of our Enterprise Technology capabilities, bringing together over 2,500 technology professionals into an integrated global team. This team will play a crucial role in enabling the ongoing transformation of our agencies and functions. A dedicated Programme Director is needed to orchestrate the people side of this transformation, ensuring that new ways of working are adopted, benefits are realised, and change fatigue is minimised.

WPP’s Agentic programme is a multi-year transformation initiative to embed agentic AI-autonomous, goal-driven systems across the enterprise, enabling smarter, more efficient ways of working in both back-office and client-facing functions. The programme aims to simplify processes, unlock productivity, and accelerate value realisation from AI and data investments. The Programme Director is accountable for the overall success of a programme, ensuring delivery of strategic outcomes and benefits realisation. This role provides leadership, governance, and direction across multiple projects and workstreams, aligning them to organisational objectives and stakeholder expectations.

Key responsibilities include:

• Strategic Leadership: Define and maintain the programme vision, objectives, and roadmap, ensuring alignment with business strategy.
• Governance & Assurance: Establish robust governance frameworks, manage risks, and ensure compliance with organisational standards.
• Benefits Realisation: Drive delivery of measurable business benefits, tracking progress against agreed KPIs and outcomes.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, sponsors, and delivery teams to secure commitment and resolve issues.
• Resource & Financial Management: Oversee programme budgets, resource allocation, and vendor management to optimise cost and value.
• Change & Adoption: Ensure readiness and adoption of new capabilities, minimising disruption and embedding change effectively.

WPP is embarking on a major 3-year Transformation to simplify, modernise, and unify its technology platforms across the group. This change is critical to:

• Enable cost-effective transformation and operational efficiency
• Accelerate adoption of AI, data, and digital platforms
• Ensure consistent delivery of value and benefits across all agencies and markets
• Minimise disruption and maximise engagement during large-scale change

What you’ll be doing:

• Develop the global vision and roadmap for the programme
• Build strong relationships with leaders to influence and drive collaboration
• Establish and lead transformation programmes across WPP Enterprise Technology
• Ensure deliverables are of the highest quality with clearly articulated scope and quantifiable business benefits
• Be accountable for programme definition, planning, orchestration, and delivery
• Identify, define and manage all aspects of the programme’s projects, including overall programme project plan, execution, resource management, risk and issue tracking, quality, governance, change management, risk management, communications and budget
• Coordinate dependencies, including those with projects, suppliers and stakeholders outside of the programme
• Create visibility across teams to mitigate coordination challenges (with Service Owners and Providers as applicable)
• Develop and maintain programme risk management plans, coordinating programme risk identification, qualification, response development and control
• Work closely with the PMOs to ensure the programme is reported on accurately
• With PMOs, run stage gates for each project in the programme
• Act as liaison between stakeholders, sponsors and steering committee and manage these relationships
• Conduct financial analyses on programme alternatives including cost/benefit analysis, to determine programme feasibility and direction
• Develop and compose business cases to support the justification of programme investment
• Manage third party suppliers/partners to contract commitments
• Performance manage project management staff and provide coaching and feedback to support their professional growth
• Ensure the programme projects use Strategy and Transformation delivery standards and tools (Transformation Delivery Framework, and Wrike)
• Support the PPM Centre of Excellence by identifying and championing areas where improvements may benefit project performance
• Share activities and lessons learnt across PM community

What you’ll need:

• Experience & Background: Extensive experience leading large-scale, complex technology transformation programmes in a global or multi-entity organisation. Proven track record of delivering enterprise-wide platforms, cloud migrations, infrastructure modernisation, or major application deployments. Strong background in portfolio, programme, and project management, with familiarity in both waterfall and hybrid delivery. Demonstrated experience working in environments with multiple vendors, system integrators, and third-party delivery partners.
• Leadership & Strategic Capability: Ability to define and articulate a clear programme vision, roadmap, and benefits case. Strong leadership presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders, including C-suite, functional heads, and agency/market leaders. Experience leading matrixed teams and managing cross-functional delivery across geographies. Demonstrated ability to set the right delivery culture, behaviours, and expectations.
• Governance, Control & Delivery Excellence: Deep understanding of programme governance, including stage gates, reporting, RAID management, and financial controls. Ability to establish and maintain robust delivery frameworks, quality standards, and assurance. Skilled in risk management, including identifying systemic risks, interdependency conflicts, and developing mitigation plans. Ability to ensure regulatory, security, and compliance alignment across programme components.
• Financial & Commercial Management: Strong capability in budget ownership, forecasting, cost control, and benefits realisation. Experience conducting business cases, cost-benefit analysis, and ROI assessments. Ability to manage vendors against contractual commitments and performance KPIs.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Communication: Exceptional communication skills, able to simplify complex programme detail into executive level insight. Ability to build trusted relationships with senior sponsors, delivery teams, and external partners. Skilled in managing change impacts, driving adoption, and minimising business disruption.
• Change, Adoption & Business Readiness: Experience overseeing change management, including communications, training, and readiness. Ability to ensure new processes, technologies, and capabilities are embedded and sustained. Comfortable addressing change fatigue, capability gaps, and resistance points.
• Technical Competence: Strong understanding of relevant enterprise technologies. Ability to balance technical constraints, architectural requirements, and business needs.
• Personal Attributes: Highly organised, resilient, and comfortable operating in ambiguous or evolving environments. Strong problem solver with ability to make clear decisions under pressure. Inclusive, people-centred leader who motivates high performing teams.

Who you are:

• You’re open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open-minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.
• You’re optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures for our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with conviction: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.
• You’re extraordinary: we are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we’ll give you:

• Passionate, inspired people - We aim to create a culture in which people can do extraordinary work.
• Scale and opportunity - We offer the opportunity to create, influence and complete projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.
• Challenging and stimulating work - Unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers.

Are you up for the challenge? We believe the best work happens when we’re together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That’s why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process. WPP is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.