Head of Technical Program Management - Loyalty
Summary
As a Head of Technical Program Management, you will drive the execution of product solutions within M&S, owning supplier delivery where applicable. You will play a crucial role in shaping and implementing the technology strategy that powers our customer loyalty initiatives. You will lead the delivery of innovative solutions that enhance our loyalty programs, ensuring they are robust, scalable, and aligned with our broader business objectives. Your expertise in technology delivery, combined with a deep understanding of loyalty systems, will drive the successful implementation of innovative platforms that elevate the customer experience and foster long-term brand loyalty. This role requires a transformational leader who can seamlessly bridge the gap between technology and business, delivering impactful results that keep us ahead in a competitive market.
What you'll do
The Head of Technical Program Management is the glue of engineering, product, and business strategies - owning programmes of work of significant visibility and complexity with broad cross-organisational and/or deep architectural impact. You are accountable for end-to-end technical delivery and performance across domains within the organisation and external suppliers, utilising your expertise in handling constraints, improving quality or removing blockers. The mission is to harness agile ways of working and embed our strategic ambitions to successfully deliver sophisticated change at scale. The key to the success of this role is simplifying the complex processes into simple, straightforward solutions and building positive, trusting relationships through consistent delivery of solutions and effective communication in-line with the M&S Way.
Key Responsibilities:
- Plan, own and deliver highly complex and multi-disciplinary initiatives, collaborating with senior leaders to align strategic goals and drive a customer-first mindset in Technology
- Create roadmaps and objectives and key results alongside the Head of Product & Head of Engineering to ensure alignment to strategic ambitions for M&S including the Technology Strategy
- Facilitate continuous refinement and prioritisation of initiatives working alongside Product, Engineering and Business leaders
- Drive data-driven decisions through metrics and regular reporting to provide visibility creating a culture of transparency
- Develop trusted relationships with partners across business areas using deep and relevant technology experience to simplify complex technology issues
Key Experience - the ideal candidate will have:
- Extensive experience delivering large-scale initiatives across multiple product functions and domains
- Excellent interpersonal skills, proactive can-do demeanour and ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical individuals including director level
- Track record of providing Technical leadership across domains, product groups and Program management during all phases of software development from ideation to realising value, demonstrating critical thinking and thought leadership
- Strong working knowledge/experience of Agile/Scaled Agile practices including Scrum, Kanban and DevOps
- Highly diligent professional with excellent leadership and coaching skills in lean agile practices
Desirable:
- Experience in multiple Agile Project/Portfolio Management tools e.g. Jira/JiraAlign/Rally
- Experience using facilitation techniques, Design Thinking techniques, coaching and learning frameworks
- Experience of engineering practices like BDD, XP and Agile Testing, Continuous Integration and Continuous delivery
- Prior experience working in the Retail Industry
Who you are:
We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're redefining, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're redefining how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.
If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.
#J-18808-Ljbffr