Description

Senior Delivery Manager

Programme Name: LCST

Location: Bristol, UK

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Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced and collaborative Senior Delivery Manager to lead and support several cross-functional IT development teams operating within a dynamic enterprise environment. In this role your primary focus is to ensure that development capacity is effectively balanced between strategic Portfolio Assurance Group (PAG) prioritised project work and essential Business-As-Usual (BAU) activities—including defects, patching, and evergreening tasks. You will not own the project deliveries themselves, but you will own the capacity that is available and ensure that it is appropriately applied to deliver maximum business value.

Strategically you will act as a vital bridge between iterative IT delivery where the development teams use scrum-derived ways of working and multiple large-scale, Waterfall-managed projects. By providing a clear, forward-looking view of candidate sprints, you will empower internal Project Managers (acting as valued internal customers using a mix of Jira and MS Project) to proactively refine their project plans and smoothly reconcile sprint contents against their own project dependencies and milestones.

As the development teams are early in their use of iterative development, you will play a key supportive role in mentoring and guiding them as they grow more effective and confident in this way of working.

What will I be doing?

1. Capacity Balancing & Value Optimisation

• Balance Project and BAU Demands: Successfully negotiate and allocate team capacity between the project pipeline prioritised by the PAG and the necessary technical debt, defects, patching, and evergreening required to maintain a healthy IT estate.
• Optimise Business Value: Ensure the project portion of team output smoothly aligns with the highest PAG business priorities, helping the organisation achieve its key strategic goals each sprint.
• Balance Demand with Capacity: Evaluate incoming internal Project Manager demands against team capacity and current commitments, ensuring resources are shared constructively to support the business as a whole.
• Partner with Project Managers: Build positive relationships with internal Project Managers competing for team output, maintaining open communication and transparency over capacity constraints.

2. Collaborative Planning

• Provide Forward-Looking Roadmap Projections: Maintain a rolling forecast of candidate sprints to give internal Project Managers early visibility and confidence regarding future delivery timelines.
• Enable Proactive Plan Adjustment: Share helpful data insights that empower internal Project Managers to adjust their MS Project baselines ahead of time when business priorities or capacity allocations shift.
• Support Dependency Visibility: Utilise Jira tooling to provide the necessary visibility for internal Project Managers to smoothly manage and reconcile their own project dependencies.
• Maintain Backlog Health: Keep the teams’ Jira environment tidy and therefore useful for data driven improvements in estimation, ensuring clean ticket tracking, accurate sizing updates, and clear traceability across both project tasks and BAU activities.

3. Mentorship & Team Growth

• Support Team Learning: Act as a trusted mentor to teams who are new to scrum-derived ways of working, helping them understand collaborative principles, build stable velocity, and reduce technical friction.
• Facilitate Inspiring Ceremonies: Establish and run positive Stand-ups, Iteration Planning, Backlog Refinement, and Retrospectives structured to build team confidence and collaboration.
• Encourage Continuous Improvement: Use data-driven insights from retrospectives to help teams mature, reduce unnecessary context-switching, and create a smoother internal delivery cycle.

4. Delivery Enablement & Governance

• Protect Team Focus and Workflow: Support clear, structured intake channels so that new requests flow through the correct processes for consistency of engineering engagement, preventing unexpected disruptions to active development sprints.
• Contribute to Process Improvements: Act as a consulted expert on engineering workflows, offering feedback and suggesting continuous improvements to delivery paths.
• Support Release Governance: Help teams ensure their deliverables meet both agreed "Definitions of Done" and enterprise IT compliance, security documentation, and sign-offs.

What does Leidos need from me?

• Proven track record as a Technical Delivery Manager or Agile Delivery Manager delivering work for multiple different projects in a hybrid environment within the IT or software development industry.
• Forward-Looking Forecasting: Demonstrated ability to create, maintain, and communicate clear, forward-looking iteration plans and capacity forecasts across a complex portfolio.
• Capacity Management Expertise: Proven ability to manage and balance a split backlog, successfully allocating resources between business projects and technical maintenance (defects, evergreening, patching).
• Hybrid Environment Familiarity: Experience working with portfolio structures where iterative development teams provide resources to multiple concurrent Waterfall corporate projects.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Collaboration: Strong communication and negotiation skills, with a proven ability to partner with senior business leaders and internal Project Managers to navigate resource options constructively.
• Tooling Proficiency: Strong hands-on experience utilising Jira for day-to-day team delivery management and forecasting, alongside familiarity with how JIRA can support MS Project schedules.
• Matrix Leadership: Strong ability to influence, inspire, and guide technical teams without needing direct line management authority.

Clearance Requirements:

• BPSS pre-screening required to start
• SC required for the role

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Leidos UK! Join our team and discover a culture of collaboration, innovation, diversity, trust, caring management, communication transparency, work-life balance, and overall job satisfaction…

What we do for you:
At Leidos we are PASSIONATE about customer success, UNITED as a team and INSPIRED to make a difference. We offer meaningful and engaging careers, a collaborative c