PMO Lead

Thesis is looking for a PMO Lead to cover a period of maternity leave.  This is someone who can take the reins of our implementation portfolio, lead the Project Management team, and still roll their sleeves up on the projects that matter most.  This is a genuinely dual role. You will own the governance, standards, reporting and resource planning that keep a book of concurrent Thesis SM implementations predictable and profitable across the UK and North America. You will also personally project manage a small number of strategic or complex implementations, working directly with senior stakeholders at some of our most significant institutions.
You will line manage and develop a team of Project Managers spread across UK and North American time zones, setting the expectations, decision rights and ways of working that make delivery consistent wherever it happens. You will report to the VP of Customer Experience, and your view of portfolio health will be the one the leadership team relies on.  Stakeholder management runs through the whole role. Externally, you will be a credible senior contact for client sponsors and executives, holding relationships steady when delivery gets difficult. Internally, you will depend on colleagues in Support, Product, Solutions Consulting and Sales who do not report to you — and a good deal of the job is making those relationships work in the customer's interest.
It is a fixed-term appointment, so we are looking for someone who can land quickly, build trust fast and take real ownership from a standing start, and who will leave the function in better shape than they found it.

• Own the health of the implementation portfolio across the UK and North America, and maintain a single, trusted view of status, risk and delivery confidence
• Chair portfolio reviews and report portfolio performance into the Customer Experience leadership team
• Own and improve our delivery methodology, stage gates, templates and PM toolkit, and make sure they are applied consistently in both regions
• Personally project manage a small number of strategic, complex or at-risk implementations end to end
• Line manage, coach and develop a team of Project Managers across UK and North American time zones
• Own resource forecasting and allocation, balancing capacity against the forward book and resolving contention with clear trade-offs
• Monitor effort, utilisation and margin, and act early where planned and actual diverge
• Act as a senior point of contact and escalation for client sponsors, programme boards and executives
• Build the internal relationships the role depends on — Support, Product, Solutions Consulting, Sales and Finance — including clean handover from implementation into support
• Lead escalation and recovery where delivery confidence has dropped, and keep reporting honest when projects are under pressure
• Turn lessons learned into real changes to how we deliver
• Hand over and hand back cleanly, leaving a documented portfolio position at the end of the cover period

• Experience leading a PMO or delivery function accountable for a portfolio of concurrent client implementation projects
• Line management, coaching and development of project managers, ideally across more than one country or time zone
• Hands-on senior project management of full lifecycle SaaS implementations — Student Information System, ERP or comparable enterprise platforms
• A track record of building portfolio governance that drives outcomes: stage gates, delivery assurance, portfolio RAID, steering committees and executive reporting
• Strong resource forecasting and capacity planning across a multi-project delivery book, including utilisation and planned versus actual effort
• Commercial delivery discipline — change control, scope protection, effort and margin management
• Experience leading escalation and recovery on projects that have gone off track, including direct engagement with executive client stakeholders
• Confidence managing senior client stakeholders — resetting expectations, delivering unwelcome messages and rebuilding confidence where it has been lost
• A track record of working effectively across internal functions you depend on but do not control, such as Support, Product, Solutions Consulting and Sales
• Confident with a PSA or portfolio tool (Projector, Kantata, Certinia or similar), plus Smartsheet, MS Project, Excel and PowerPoint
• Formal project or programme management certification (PRINCE2, APM PMQ, PMP) or portfolio certification (P3O, MSP, MoP) is desirable
• Higher education, EdTech or public sector delivery experience is desirable but not essential

• Competitive Base Salary
• Work from home allowance to contribute towards your monthly bills
• Annual Discretionary Bonus/Commission Plan
• Salary Exchange Pension Scheme with 8% contribution from Thesis and 3% minimum employee contribution 
• Enjoy flexible, trust-based time off to recharge and maintain a healthy work-life balance
• Private Medical Insurance
• BHSF Health Cash Plan which allows you to claim back the costs of the excess on Private Medical, various other health benefits such as dental, optical, private prescriptions.  
• Yu Life Long Term Health Insurance & 4x Base Salary Life Insurance
• Mortgage Benefit
• EAP
• Enhanced Family Leave policies