PMO Manager

PMO Manager – Digital Transformation Portfolio in Retail - 2 year FTC 📊🛍️

Pulse is partnering with a well-known UK brand in the retail space going through a major digital transformation, with ambitious plans to continue scaling its customer-facing technology. As the business scales its transformation agenda, it’s investing in a brand new PMO capability to bring order, rigour and pace to a portfolio worth hundreds of millions over multiple years.

This is a newly created role, sitting at the heart of a portfolio spanning multiple parallel programmes and you’ll be the person who builds the governance, reporting and financial backbone the portfolio doesn’t yet have.

This is a senior, high-visibility role for someone who isn’t fazed by scale, ambiguity or competing priorities, and who wants to build a PMO function from the ground up rather than inherit one.

What you’ll be doing:

• Establishing portfolio governance, reporting cycles and standards from scratch, forums, decision rights, cadence, quality bar
• Owning cross-portfolio dependency mapping and tracking across multiple parallel programmes
• Leading the financial carve-up of the portfolio: allocating budget per project/programme, running monthly governance reporting, and tracking overs and unders
• Consolidating multi-programme reporting into a clear, evidence-led executive view
• Facilitating fortnightly portfolio-programme check-ins, surfacing risks and plan changes early
• Setting the operating standards, playbook and tooling that programmes deliver against
• Deputising for the Portfolio Lead in governance forums as required

What they’re looking for:

• 5+ years’ experience in portfolio, programme or PMO management within large, complex organisations
• Ideally a background in the retail industry.
• A proven track record of establishing portfolio governance and financial management from scratch, not just running an existing one
• Strong commercial and financial acumen, budget allocation, variance tracking, business case governance
• Comfortable operating at pace with big numbers and real ambiguity; this portfolio is worth hundreds of millions over multiple years
• Exceptional stakeholder management, able to influence and hold to account Heads of and Directors who aren’t direct reports

📍 Location: Berkshire (2 days - hybrid)

A rare opportunity to build a portfolio office from the ground up, shaping how one of the UK’s most ambitious digital transformations is governed, funded and delivered.

PMO Manager – Digital Transformation Portfolio in Retail - 2 year FTC 📊🛍️