Program Manager
Posted Today by Futureheads Recruitment | B Corp™
Negotiable
Outside
Hybrid
London Area, United Kingdom
Summary: The role of Contract Programme Manager Lead focuses on overseeing a complex portfolio of merchant migration work within a large-scale Migration Programme. This senior position requires hands-on leadership to drive the delivery of technical migrations, ensuring alignment across multiple teams and stakeholders. The individual will be responsible for translating strategy into actionable plans, managing risks, and maintaining clear communication throughout the migration process. The role emphasizes technical fluency and proactive problem-solving to ensure successful project execution.
Key Responsibilities:
- Take end-to-end ownership of the Migration Programme plan across several product and engineering tribes.
- Lead the practical delivery of Buynet-style migrations for small business/merchant customers.
- Actively push priorities into teams and track delivery at a detailed level.
- Engage in technical conversations with architects and engineers regarding telephony, networks, and cloud platforms.
- Coordinate with operations/customer teams to ensure merchants are informed and prepared for migrations.
- Maintain a tight grip on risks, issues, assumptions, and dependencies across all migration workstreams.
- Provide concise programme-level reporting to leadership.
Key Skills:
- Senior Programme Manager/Programme Lead experience with complex technology migrations.
- Ability to work across multiple squads/tribes while maintaining an integrated plan.
- Strong hands-on delivery mindset with a focus on execution.
- Technical fluency in discussions about networks, telephony, cloud, and email platforms.
- Highly proactive, structured, and detail-oriented.
Salary (Rate): undetermined
City: London
Country: United Kingdom
Working Arrangements: hybrid
IR35 Status: outside IR35
Seniority Level: Senior
Industry: IT
Contract Programme Manager Lead - Migration Programme (Outside IR35)
Day rate: £550-£650 per day
Location: London, UK (hybrid)
Contract: Initial 6 months
Role overview
This role is a senior, hands-on Programme Manager Lead, sitting in the central Delivery team and funded by a large-scale Migration Programme. The remit is to own and drive a complex portfolio of merchant migration work - not to run ceremonies as a Scrum Master. The person needs to set direction, push priorities, get into technical detail and make sure multiple teams execute against a single, coherent plan.
What we specifically need
- Programme ownership across tribes
- Take end-to-end ownership of the Migration Programme plan across several product and engineering tribes.
- Turn strategy into a clear, phased delivery roadmap with milestones, cutover dates and capacity assumptions.
- Decide and communicate what gets done first, what moves, and what is de-scoped, with clear rationale.
- Buynet/tech migration delivery
- Lead the practical delivery of Buynet-style migrations for small business/merchant customers, including:
- Moving analogue landlines to Digital Voice/VoIP services.
- Coordinating broadband upgrades to fibre-based services where required.
- Managing email and communications migrations from legacy/hosted systems to IP-based cloud platforms.
- Ensure all connected devices and services (eg alarms, PDQs, routers, fax lines, Legacy systems) are identified, assessed and safely transitioned or retired.
- Hard-nosed delivery leadership (not just governance)
- Actively push priorities into teams: translate programme goals into clear deliverables and deadlines for each tribe.
- Track delivery at a detailed level (stories, technical tasks, dependencies) and intervene early when dates or scope are at risk.
- Make trade-off calls with Product and Engineering: simplify, sequence or cut where needed to protect migration timelines.
- Technical fluency and decision support
- Be able to sit in technical conversations with architects and engineers about telephony, networks, cloud platforms and email systems.
- Understand enough to challenge assumptions, spot hidden dependencies (eg DNS, routing, authentication, integration touchpoints) and ask the right questions.
- Work with technical leads to design realistic migration approaches (big-bang vs phased, pilot vs scale-up, fall-back options).
- Merchant and stakeholder management
- Coordinate with operations/customer teams so merchants understand what is happening, when, and what they need to do.
- Build and manage clear playbooks for migration waves, including communications, readiness checks, contingency steps and post-migration support.
- Align product, engineering, operations, commercial and support stakeholders around a single migration plan and reporting cadence.
- Risk, issue and detail management
- Maintain a very tight grip on risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies across all migration workstreams.
- Proactively identify where migrations could fail (capacity, data quality, third-party lag, technical constraints) and put mitigations in place before go-live.
- Provide concise, honest programme-level reporting to leadership, with clear here's what's off track and what we're doing about it.
Required profile
Senior Programme Manager/Programme Lead with clear examples of owning complex technology migrations (telecoms, connectivity, cloud). Evidence of working across multiple squads/tribes and still keeping a single, integrated plan. Strong, hands-on delivery mindset: known for making things land, not just running steering committees. Hands-on delivery across complex technical projects (not just a strategist but an execution person too) Comfortable and credible in technical discussions with architects and engineers about networks, telephony, cloud and email platforms. Highly proactive, structured and detail-oriented - someone who naturally spots gaps in plans, clarifies ownership and pushes for decisions.