Programme Director

Description:

A dedicated Programme Director is needed to orchestrate the people side of this transformation, ensuring that new ways of working are adopted, benefits are realised, and change fatigue is minimised.

WPP’s Tenant Consolidation programme will unite WPP on a single, consolidated Microsoft 365 tenant to enable seamless collaboration, one identity for every user, and full compliance—while reducing complexity, cost, and risk across the group.

The Programme Director is accountable for the overall success of a programme, ensuring delivery of strategic outcomes and benefits realisation. This role provides leadership, governance, and direction across multiple projects and workstreams, aligning them to organisational objectives and stakeholder expectations. Key responsibilities include:

Strategic Leadership: Define and maintain the programme vision, objectives, and roadmap, ensuring alignment with business strategy. 
Governance & Assurance: Establish robust governance frameworks, manage risks, and ensure compliance with organisational standards. 
Benefits Realisation: Drive delivery of measurable business benefits, tracking progress against agreed KPIs and outcomes. 
Stakeholder Engagement: Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, sponsors, and delivery teams to secure commitment and resolve issues. 
Resource & Financial Management: Oversee programme budgets, resource allocation, and vendor management to optimise cost and value. 
Change & Adoption: Ensure readiness and adoption of new capabilities, minimising disruption and embedding change effectively. 

What You'll Be Doing

Develop the global vision and roadmap for the programme 
Build strong relationships with leaders to influence and drive collaboration 
Establish and lead transformation programmes across WPP Enterprise Technology 
Ensure deliverables are of the highest quality with clearly articulated scope and quantifiable business benefits 
Be accountable for programme definition, planning, orchestration, and delivery 
Identify, define and manage all aspects of the programme’s projects. Including, but not limited to, the overall programme project plan, execution, resource management, risk and issue tracking, quality, governance, change management, risk management, communications and budget 
Coordinate dependencies, including those with projects, suppliers and stakeholders outside of the programme 
Creates visibility across teams to mitigate coordination challenges (with Service Owners and Providers as applicable) 
Develop and maintain programme risk management plans. Coordinates programme risk identification, qualification, response development and control 
Work closely with the PMOs to ensure the programme is reported on accurately 
With PMOs, run stage gates for each project in the programme 
Acts as liaison between stakeholders, sponsors and steering committee and manages these relationships 
Conduct financial analyses on programme alternatives including cost/benefit analysis, to determine programme feasibility and direction 
Develop and compose business cases to support the justification of programme investment 
Manage third party suppliers/partners to contract commitments 
Performance manage project management staff and provide coaching and feedback to support thier professional growth. 
Ensure the programme projects use Strategy and Transformation delivery standards and tools (Transformation Delivery Framework, and Wrike) 
Supporting the PPM Centre of Excellence by identifying and championing areas where improvements may benefit project performance 
Share activities and lessons learnt across PM community 

What you’ll need: 

Experience & Background

Extensive experience leading largescale, complex technology transformation programmes in a global or multi-entity organisation. 
Proven track record of delivering enterprise wide platforms, cloud migrations, infrastructure modernisation, or major application deployments. 
Strong background in portfolio, programme, and project management, with familiarity in both waterfall and hybrid delivery. 
Demonstrated experience working in environments with multiple vendors, system integrators, and third-party delivery partners. 

Leadership & Strategic Capability

Ability to define and articulate a clear programme vision, roadmap, and benefits case. 
Strong leadership presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders, including C-suite, functional heads, and agency/market leaders. 
Experience leading matrixed teams and managing cross-functional delivery across geographies. 
Demonstrated ability to set the right delivery culture, behaviours, and expectations. 

Governance, Control & Delivery Excellence

Deep understanding of programme governance, including stage gates, reporting, RAID management, and financial controls. 
Ability to establish and maintain robust delivery frameworks, quality standards, and assurance. 
Skilled in risk management, including identifying systemic risks, interdependency conflicts, and developing mitigation plans. 
Ability to ensure regulatory, security, and compliance alignment across programme components. 

Financial & Commercial Management

Strong capability in budget ownership, forecasting, cost control, and benefits realisation. 
Experience conducting business cases, cost–benefit analysis, and ROI assessments. 
Ability to manage vendors against contractual commitments and performance KPIs. 

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

Exceptional comms skills, able to simplify complex programme detail into exec-level insight. 
Ability to build trusted relationships with senior sponsors, delivery teams, and external partners. 
Skilled in managing change impacts, driving adoption, and minimising business disruption. 

Change, Adoption & Business Readiness

Experience overseeing change management, including communications, training, and readiness. 
Ability to ensure new processes, technologies, and capabilities are embedded and sustained. 
Comfortable addressing change fatigue, capability gaps, and resistance points. 

Technical Competence

Strong understanding of relevant enterprise technologies. 
Ability to balance technical constraints, architectural requirements, and business needs. 

Personal Attributes

Highly organised, resilient, and comfortable operating in ambiguous or evolving environments. 
Strong problem solver with ability to make clear decisions under pressure. 
Inclusive, people centred leader who motivates high-performing teams.