Senior Project Manager - Business Change in Leeds

Location: Buttershaw, Bradford (hybrid – 2 days a week in office). You will be required to travel to different Yorkshire Water locations and pending office move to Leeds (LS10) from Summer 2026.

Work type: Permanent, 37 hours per week Monday – Friday.

Salary: £52,855 – £77,178 per annum (depending on experience), with annual incentive up to 15% of annual salary and a pension scheme with up to 12% company contribution.

Benefits: life assurance cover 4 times pensionable salary, 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays and an extra wellness day, health cash plan, critical illness, dental, and partner cover, retail savings scheme, GP online, cycle to work, gym discounts.

What we do: Yorkshire Water provides clean and safe drinking water and wastewater services to over 5.4 million residents and millions of visitors in the Yorkshire region. We protect the environment, plan for our water assets and create essential services that support community health and prosperity.

Where you fit in:

• Investigate and analyse opportunities to drive efficiency across the capital delivery process.
• Provide input to the strategic planning process to ensure change aligns with the long‑term aspirations of the capital programme.
• Build business cases to support investment in change activity that will drive cost reduction in programme delivery.
• Support project planning and delivery of key objectives through change management resources and workshop facilitation.
• Develop the business change plan for agreed priorities, acting as a bridge between project/programme management and business operations.
• Obtain assurance from business operations that the change plan will deliver the required benefits.
• Prepare the business readiness plan for the transition to new ways of working and ensure necessary launch approval and go/no‑go decisions are managed to pre‑defined criteria.
• Optimise the timing of project deliverables into business operations.
• Take on project management of continuous improvement initiatives in addition to managing business change.

Key responsibilities:

• Support the programme manager with key governance on the strategic change programme.
• Deliver key strategic change projects and continuous improvement activities.
• Design and deliver business readiness and change plans, including launch, engagement and communications across the programme.
• Oversee change initiatives across the business and identify opportunities to align and impact delivery.
• Ensure change is adopted and embedded through sustainment and reinforcement activities.
• Track and realise benefits across the change programme.
• Lead yourself and a team to deliver a programme of work that supports the business strategy and delivers measurable outcomes.
• Produce key documents for sign‑off by leadership teams.

What skills & qualifications you will need:

• Significant delivery experience within business change, ideally qualified via ProSci or equivalent.
• Solid background of programme governance and delivery.
• Focused, driven individual who excels in a challenging environment.
• Great people‑management skills with coaching and mentoring ability.
• Excellent communicator, negotiator and presenter with proven project‑management track record.
• Experience of leadership and working with multi‑disciplinary teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to present complex information to a wide range of audiences.

You will also benefit from having:

• A recognised qualification in project/programme management such as APM is desirable but not essential.
• Experience working with others to drive innovation and deliver project efficiencies and cost savings for the business.

Accessibility: We are committed to removing barriers and ensuring our recruitment process is accessible to everyone. If you have an accessibility need, disability or condition that requires changes to the recruitment process, please include this information in your application and we will discuss any reasonable adjustments required.

Application urgency: We might start interviewing and close the position earlier based on the response, so send in your application as soon as possible.

Pre‑employment checks: All roles are subject to a medical questionnaire and further medicals when required. Successful applicants will be required to undergo basic disclosure checks and potential security clearance (Counter Terrorist or Security Check) before commencing employment.