Program Management Office Lead/PMO Lead

PMO Lead (Project Management Office) - AVP

Location: London / Hybrid

Office Attendance: 4 days per week onsite

Reporting To: Head of Change Delivery

Department: Change & Transformation

Role Purpose

The PMO Lead is responsible for establishing, operating and continuously improving the Project Management Office across the Change portfolio. Acting as a trusted partner to senior stakeholders, the role provides oversight, control and assurance over project delivery, governance, financial management, resource planning and portfolio reporting.

The successful candidate will ensure that projects are delivered in a controlled, transparent and commercially sound manner, providing timely and accurate insight to executives, steering committees and project teams. The role combines strategic portfolio management with hands-on PMO leadership, helping drive delivery excellence across a diverse portfolio of regulatory, technology, operational and business change initiatives. The role will also champion the responsible use of AI productivity tooling and automation, ensuring that improvements are governed, transparent and auditable.

Key Responsibilities

Portfolio Governance & Assurance

• Own and continuously enhance PMO governance frameworks, standards and methodologies.
• Ensure all projects operate within agreed governance processes and stage-gate controls.
• Provide independent challenge and assurance to delivery managers and sponsors.
• Coordinate portfolio reviews, steering committees and executive reporting cycles.
• Ensure key risks, issues, dependencies and decisions are identified, tracked and escalated appropriately.
• Drive consistency of project documentation, controls and reporting across the portfolio.

Financial Management & Controls

• Own portfolio financial tracking, forecasting and reporting.
• Monitor project expenditure against approved budgets and business cases.
• Support capital expenditure (CapEx) governance, benefit tracking and investment oversight.
• Challenge financial assumptions, estimates and forecasts to improve accuracy and transparency.
• Produce monthly portfolio financial reporting for executive stakeholders.
• Partner with Finance to ensure strong budgetary control and regulatory compliance.

Portfolio Reporting & MI

• Provide timely, accurate and insightful reporting to ExCo, SteerCo and senior leadership teams.
• Analyse portfolio performance trends and identify areas requiring intervention.
• Drive data quality improvements across project reporting and management information.
• Ensure reporting focuses on outcomes, benefits, delivery confidence and financial performance.

Resource & Capacity Management

• Maintain portfolio-wide visibility of resource demand and supply.
• Support workforce planning across project delivery teams.
• Identify resource constraints and recommend mitigation strategies.
• Partner with delivery leaders to optimise resource allocation and utilisation.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify opportunities to improve delivery processes, governance and tools.
• Support implementation of portfolio management systems and reporting automation.
• Lead initiatives that improve forecasting accuracy, reporting quality and delivery performance.
• Promote lessons learned and continuous improvement across the change function.

AI Productivity Tooling, Automation & Auditability

• Work in collaboration with CABs AI Centre of Excellent to create AI-first productivity tooling, identifying practical use cases that improve planning, analysis, reporting and decision support.
• Drive automation of repeatable PMO processes and controls to reduce manual effort, improve timeliness and increase data quality.
• Ensure AI-enabled and automated processes have appropriate human oversight, access controls and documented accountability.
• Maintain auditable processes, evidence and data lineage so that key portfolio decisions, approvals, financial movements and reporting outputs can be traced and independently reviewed.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Significant experience leading a PMO within a complex change or transformation environment.
• Strong portfolio governance and project assurance experience.
• Proven track record managing large-scale change portfolios.
• Strong financial management experience, including budget forecasting and CapEx governance.
• Experience preparing executive-level reporting and steering committee materials.
• Excellent stakeholder management abilities with experience engaging senior executives.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Experience managing risks, issues, dependencies and delivery controls.
• Advanced Microsoft Office skills, particularly Excel and PowerPoint.
• Practical experience using AI productivity tooling to improve the quality and efficiency of portfolio or PMO activities.
• Experience designing or implementing workflow and reporting automation within a controlled business environment.
• Strong understanding of auditability, including evidence retention, traceability, data lineage and control ownership.

Desirable

• Experience within financial services, banking or regulated environments.
• Knowledge of regulatory change delivery.
• Experience with portfolio management tools such as Power BI, Planview, Clarity, Jira or similar.
• Understanding of project accounting, investment governance and benefits management.
• Relevant qualifications such as P3O, MSP, PRINCE2, PMP or PMO Certification.
• Experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power Automate, Power BI or comparable AI and automation platforms.
• Awareness of responsible AI, information security, data protection and model or output assurance considerations in regulated environments.

Personal Attributes

• Highly organised and detail-oriented.
• Strong commercial awareness and financial acumen.
• Confident and credible communicator at executive level.
• Able to challenge constructively and influence senior stakeholders.
• Outcome-focused with a strong commitment to delivery excellence.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced and evolving environment.
• Proactive, resilient and able to manage competing priorities.