Senior Delivery Manager (Milton Keynes, ENG, GB, MK7 6AA)

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About the Role

This role of Senior Delivery Manager currently sits within the Engineering Profession in Digital Services. The role holder will be based in a multi-disciplinary team requiring collaboration across the team and with key stakeholders from across the University.

This role will initially be assigned to a specific area such as Tuition Services, Data, or Enrolment; but may be redeployed to other teams or domains in future, depending on organisational needs. The core responsibilities and expectations will remain consistent with the role’s job description.

Key Responsibilities

As a Senior Delivery Manager, you will:

• Manage the end-to-end delivery of high impact projects or programs, within multi-disciplinary teams, that will be delivering complex digital products and services to stakeholders.
• Ensure agile delivery practices are applied effectively to meet organisational goals.
• Ensure delivery aligns with strategic priorities and stakeholder expectations.
• Plan, schedule, prioritise and manage work effectively and deliver to agreed timelines.
• Identify and mitigate risks, blockers, and dependencies across teams.
• Use agile tools (e.g. Jira, Azure DevOps) to manage workflows and reporting.

Stakeholder management & reporting

• Communicate delivery progress, risks, and outcomes clearly and effectively.
• Influence decision-making through data-driven insights and delivery metrics.
• Ensure transparency of delivery outcomes to senior leadership.
• Build strong relationships with product owners, business leads, and technical teams.
• Work with leadership to identify and mobilise resources required for the product/project/program.

Line Management

• Provide line management to Delivery Managers and/or other team members, including performance development, coaching, career progression, and wellbeing support.
• Foster a high-performing, inclusive culture that aligns with organisational values and delivery excellence.

Continuous improvement

• Be an active contributor to the Delivery Practice
• Collaborate with stakeholders and team members to ensure we achieve the intended outcomes whilst delivering efficiently.

About You

Essential:

• Proven knowledge and experience of Delivery Management of the full service and digital product life cycle, including using Agile and other techniques.
• Deep understanding of technical delivery, with the ability to work closely with engineering teams, navigate architectural discussions, and ensure alignment with delivery outcomes.
• Strong people, communication and negotiation skills and a proven ability to work with external partners, stakeholders, and customers, including the ability to push back and challenge the status quo.
• Experience of working in multidisciplinary teams (large and small) delivering a specific product, service or transformation.
• Support financial planning and monitor delivery spend (if applicable) to ensure alignment with project goals.
• Have an understanding of Product Management, Service Design and development practices – although this may not be your specialty.
• Skilled at building trust, managing team dynamics and motivating people.

Desirable:

• Experience of working with different delivery frameworks.
• Experience of coaching and mentoring.
• Experience of financial management.
• Experience of supplier management in ensuring third-party performance alignment to delivery objectives.

Behaviours:

• Communication: Communicates effectively with a variety of audiences; negotiates well and appropriately manages conflict.
• Initiative and problem solving: Uses initiative to identify and solve problems proactively; uses good judgment to refer issues upwards as necessary and identifies and manages risk.
• Team work: builds respectful and productive working relationships and works collaboratively across organisational boundaries towards common goals.
• Working under pressure: Remains effective and positive even when under pressure.
• Ability to learn: Understands and adapts to new ways of working.
• Continuous improvement: Identifies opportunities for continuous improvement; shows commitment to own professional development; demonstrates enthusiasm, willingness and ability to learn new skills.

Support with your application

If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.

What's in it for you?

At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).

Flexible working

We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be approximately 2-3 times per month.

Next steps in the Recruitment process

We anticipate that interviews for this role will be taking place online via Microsoft Teams early in December 2025.

Early closing date notification

We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.

How to apply

To apply for this role please submit the following documents:

• CV
• A personal statement (up to 500 words) that summarises why you’re interested in the role and how your skills and experience make you a good fit. 

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