Senior Delivery Manager

Job Title: Senior Delivery Manager

Reports to: Head of Delivery

Direct Reports: None

Must be UK based

Close date: 24/1/25

Kooth PLC is a digital mental health company committed to providing accessible mental health care for all, with a focus on children and young people in both the UK and the US. We aim to support the mental wellbeing of over 17 million people, boasting over twenty years of data and clinical excellence. We have been a trusted partner of the NHS and Local Authorities for over two decades, offering NICE-compliant services and holding a BACP accreditation. Kooth offers diverse access options, serving over 10.9 million people in the UK, providing immediate support without referrals, or waiting lists, available 24/7.

With a workforce of 600 employees, Kooth is passionate about professional development and diversity and inclusion.

We offer an opportunity to join a rapidly growing business with a genuine social purpose, aiming to support the mental wellbeing of over 17 million people.

Role Objective

The Senior Delivery Manager provides hands-on leadership in managing software and technology delivery, ensuring that software products are developed efficiently, meet business objectives, and are delivered on time and within budget. By fostering collaboration, promoting agile principles, mitigating risks, and empowering teams, the Senior Delivery Manager ensures a high level of technical quality and value-driven delivery.

Key Components:

Lead delivery of products and technology projects - 40%

Communicate with and manage stakeholders - 25%

Optimize delivery in squads - 25%

Maintain and develop delivery practice at Kooth - 10%

Main responsibilities:

Lead delivery of products and technology projects

• Manage the delivery of end-to-end software development across 1 to 2 squads. Coordinate efforts across engineering, product management, and other disciplines to drive the delivery of value.
• Lead planning processes within squads, including sprint and quarterly planning, ensuring that objectives are clear, measurable and achievable. Work with product and engineering colleagues to produce and maintain roadmaps, manage dependencies and set measures.
• Take accountability for your squad(s) agreeing and meeting milestones with the wider business and delivering value at pace. Act as the squad’s point of escalation for resolving issues related to your squad delivering.
• Lead on delivery processes and ways of working in your squads. Provide the squad with expertise on agile development methodologies, facilitate meetings and processes and upskill colleagues. Build the capability of your squads to work effectively in an agile way based on a deep knowledge and understanding of a range of agile and lean tools and techniques.
• Support quality assurance throughout the delivery lifecycle. Work closely with product, design, research and engineering colleagues to ensure squads adopt good practices for discovery, design development, testing, release and monitoring.
• Proactively identify, manage, and mitigate risks and issues that could affect delivery timelines, cost, or product quality. This includes anticipating technical challenges, managing dependencies between teams, and addressing roadblocks that may arise during development. Communicate risks clearly to stakeholders and work with squads to create mitigation strategies.

Stakeholder communication and management

• Take a lead role in relationships with relevant partner teams to ensure successful cross-team or cross-organisational delivery, including ability to mediate, manage and facilitate discussions across complex, high-risk, time-constrained or challenging scenarios.
• Provide stakeholders with visibility into project progress, ongoing work and changes. Use visual tools like roadmaps, progress reports, dashboards and burn-down charts to make information understandable and accessible. Ensure that all stakeholders have real-time access to the information they need to make informed decisions.
• Act as a bridge between technical teams and business stakeholders, fostering collaboration and open dialogue. Help technical teams understand business priorities, while also ensuring stakeholders appreciate the technical challenges or constraints involved. Encourage cross-functional collaboration through joint planning sessions and reviews.
• Proactively communicate risks and issues that may impact project delivery. Provide stakeholders with timely updates on potential delays, budget overruns, or technical challenges. Present mitigation strategies and ensure stakeholders are involved in critical decisions affecting scope, quality or delivery timelines.
• Manage external contractors / agencies as required
• Lead by example as a proactive person with a can-do attitude and strong communication skills

Optimise delivery in squads

• Lead a positive working environment for your squads, in which they are protected and empowered to succeed.
• Proactively plan, forecast, estimate and manage uncertainty, contingency planning and pace, use data like cycle time, change failure rate and deployment frequency to understand the capacity and performance of the squad and identify potential delivery issues early.
• Act as a team coach and critical friend. Focus on seeking constructive outcomes in discussions and giving and facilitating healthy challenge, while understanding when and how compromise is beneficial to progress.
• Monitor and manage (where possible) team dynamics and health, including keeping performance and morale high under any difficult or challenging circumstances.
• Build a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage squads to constantly evaluate and improve their development processes, tools, and techniques. Facilitate retrospectives and promote a mindset of learning from successes and failures. Use data and feedback to optimise workflows, reduce bottlenecks, and improve efficiency. Proactively share learning across Product and Technology.
• Ensure your squad(s) are equipped with the information they need to perform and deliver value. You understand that the quality of output from a team is highly impacted by the quality, clarity and shared context the team is given.
• Be proactive in challenging and improving organisational processes where they impact the pace of the squad.

Maintain and improve our inclusive and diverse culture.

• Maintain and develop delivery practice at Kooth
• Keep up to date with developments in delivery and agile / lean techniques and methodologies and introduce them to product / project teams to reflect best practice, and act as a consultant for other teams when appropriate and agreed with the Head of Delivery.
• Be proactive in maintaining a strong understanding of the work and good practices across disciplines within your squad(s). Display sufficient technical understanding to swiftly remove impediments and communicate between teams.
• Play a leading role in relevant team and organisation-wide forums such as Communities of Practice by sharing expertise and knowledge and gaining new expertise, insight and skills from others.
• Contribute to the development of shared resources, like the delivery toolkit
• Be an effective communicator, able to engage with and influence senior internal stakeholders to shape the role for Delivery as a whole at Kooth

Requirements

• Experience of working in agile multidisciplinary teams to deliver high transactional digital products and platforms using agile methodology in a complex, multi-stakeholder organisation. 
• Deep knowledge and understanding of working in user-centred product teams, with extensive experience and expertise using a range of delivery methods, tools and agile techniques to deliver projects / products within scope, on time and of a high quality.
• Strong understanding of software development, cloud technologies, and modern development practices (eg CI/CD, microservices, DevOps, TDD, continuous and automated testing) and how to integrate them into agile delivery processes. Able to participate in technical discussions, offer constructive input and proactively unblock delivery.
• Proven expertise in relationship management with the ability to build trust and influence stakeholders at all levels to communicate and negotiate successfully, protect and enable teams and generate commitment to shared goals.
• Excellent analytical thinking skills, adept at drawing together insights from data, research and stakeholders to help inform decision-making and make tactical and strategic recommendations. 
• Excellent presentation and communication skills, with the ability to explain complex decisions and implications to non-technical audiences.
• Proven ability to coach teams and individuals, fostering self-organisation, continuous improvement, and high performance.
• Action orientated, with sound judgement in identifying issues/ blockers and putting forward solutions.

Benefits

Are you looking for a fulfilling career with attractive perks and a supportive work environment? Look no further! We're excited to offer an incredible opportunity with a range of benefits that cater to your professional growth, well-being, and work-life balance.

1. Competitive Salary:

Up to £80,000

2. Generous Annual Leave:

Enjoy 28 days of annual leave, in addition to public holidays, providing you ample time to recharge and spend quality moments with your loved ones.

3. Professional Development:

Benefit from our yearly professional training programmes, tailored to your career aspirations and designed to enhance your skills and knowledge.

4. Financial Security:

Secure your financial future with our pension contributions and annual company share option awards, giving you a stake in the success of the company.

5. Health and Well-being:

Prioritize your health and well-being with our comprehensive Health Shield cover and access to an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). The EAP offers 24/7 telephone mental health support and access to GP consultations, ensuring your mental and physical health are taken care of.

6. Life Assurance:

Gain peace of mind knowing that you're covered with life assurance, providing up to four times your annual salary to your loved ones in the unfortunate event of your passing.

7. Flexible Working:

Embrace the flexibility of remote working, allowing you to create a work-life balance that suits your needs and maximizes your productivity.

8. Lifestyle Benefits:

If you're seeking a stimulating career where your well-being, growth, and contributions are valued, we invite you to apply and become a part of our dynamic and supportive team. Join us as we strive for success together!

At Kooth, we are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace that values and embraces the unique contributions of every individual. We believe in equal opportunities for all, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression or sexual orientation.

Our dedication to creating a fair and unbiased environment is reflected in all aspects of our recruitment, hiring, and employment practices. We strive to provide a work environment that is free from discrimination, where every employee is treated with respect and dignity.

Request for Reasonable Adjustments:

We are dedicated to providing reasonable adjustments to applicants and employees with disabilities or individuals who require accommodations to participate in the application process, interviews, or job-related tasks. If you require any reasonable adjustments to ensure your equal participation in our recruitment process, please inform our Human Resources team.

Your openness will allow us to work together to provide appropriate accommodations and ensure a fair and accessible application and employment experience for everyone.

Kooth plc is committed to our responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults . We are committed to recruiting candidates who share this commitment to safeguarding, and therefore we apply robust recruitment and selection procedures to ensure that the people selected are right for the job, and that all candidates are appropriately screened prior to appointment. This will include a DBS check.