Job Description

About us

We’re the team behind digital retailer Very

Our purpose, helping families get more out of life, powers everything we do. We want our people to get more out of life too! If you’re high-performing, ambitious and make the most of every opportunity, we want to hear from you. In return, you’ll enjoy heaps of flexibility, great perks and benefits, and the freedom to be yourself, keep learning and take your career wherever you want it to go.

If you love making a difference, you’ll love making it sparkle for millions of Very customers. ✨

About the role

Leads the end-to-end delivery of large scale initiatives and/or programmes of optimisation activity across one or more squads as well as ensuring delivery of small change and business-as-usual (BAU). The Lead Delivery Manager ensures delivery excellence, fosters a high-performing delivery culture, and drives continuous improvement. A Senior Delivery Manager is able to manage complex, high-risk products, and services.

This role sits within our Digital Customer Experience (DCX) tribe. We are striving to create a world class customer experience across our Mobile and Web platforms. We are in control of building this exciting future and are looking for like-minded individuals to help make this a reality. We need people with strong backgrounds in digital retail to help us on this journey as we strive to define, design, build and run frictionless experiences that sets The Very Group apart from other online retailers

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership and delivery

• Leads cross disciplinary teams (direct or matrix/internal/third parties) to deliver on time, to cost, with the right quality outcome for the customer

• Facilitates squad ceremonies (e.g., stand-ups, retrospectives, planning)

• Monitors and drives the overall progress and performance of their squads and initiatives. Track progress against sprint goals and delivery milestones

• Establishes and manages delivery plans and roadmaps for their squads and initiatives. Ensures alignment between delivery plans and dependencies across squads. Collaborates with Product Managers and Business Analysts to refine and prioritise backlogs.

• Facilitates cross-team collaboration and removes blockers. Ensures clear communication and transparency within their delivery teams.

• Acts as a strong leader and role model demonstrating an excellent delivery mind set and promoting a culture of accountability

• Contributes to improving delivery capability across their squads and through their direct reports.

• Facilitates the delivery of high-quality software regularly, repeatedly and predictably using a metric driven approach to continuous improvement.

• Monitors delivery metrics and optimises ways of working. Fosters a culture of continuous improvement and learning.

• Supports the Portfolio Manager in raising standards across delivery and implementing strategies to meet our delivery OKRs

• Takes part in and supports community forums

Risk and issue management

• Proactively identifies and manages risks, issue, assumptions and dependencies that could impact their team’s delivery and benefit realisation.

• Manages the escalation process to Portfolio Manager and ePMO

Planning & Prioritisation:

• Facilitates planning cycles across squads and contributes to QPP.

• Works with stakeholders to facilitate the prioritisation of work from a technical and product roadmap perspective.

Governance:

• Builds and manages the agreed governance structure across projects, small change, and BAU in liaison with ePMO.

• Ensures all key stakeholders are held accountable for their part of the delivery.

• Ensures that all key decisions are documented and have the right level of sign off.

• Monitors and manages delivery performance, risks, and status

• Ensures all work is managed in scope and any change requests are managed and impacts surfaced

Resource & Capacity Management:

• Manages allocated squad and team capacity; aligns resourcing to priorities and optimising the allocation of resources.

• Identifies and resolves resource bottlenecks in liaison with the Portfolio Manager.

Financial Management:

• Manages budget allocations and tracks spend across their allocated squads and initiatives. Ensures that regular cost reviews are held ensuring that any issues are escalated.

• Supports the creation of business cases and benefits tracking. Acts to support decision making through provision of advice and information to senior management regarding investments and priorities.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Engages regularly and builds productive relationships with senior leaders, Heads of Product, Heads of Tech, and delivery teams.

• Provides clear communication on progress, risks, and changes to the ePMO and business stakeholders.

Change Management:

• Supports effective transition of changes into BAU.

Reporting & MI:

• Provides regular initiative and roadmap updates ensuring risks are highlighted and mitigation plans are in place

• Delivers accurate and timely reporting on KPIs and delivery metrics.

About you

• The Lead Delivery Manager is an experienced delivery professional who role models excellent delivery practices

• A proven ability to govern large, complex, and cross-functional initiatives

• Good commercial and financial acumen.

• Proficient in Agile delivery models.

• Can recognise when something does not work and encourage a mindset of experimentation.

• Able to listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them.

• A bias towards action, always finding ways to remove barriers to rapid delivery.

• Strong stakeholder and 3rd party management skills.

• Manages stakeholder expectations and facilitate discussions about high risk and complexity even within constrained timescales.

• Actively addresses the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team or no clear ownership exists.

• Can identify dependencies in plans across services and coordinate delivery.

• Engages colleagues with enthusiasm and commitment. They are able to bring people together to form a motivated team.

• Ability to coach and mentor delivery leads. Excellent conflict resolution skills.

• Knows how to optimise the delivery flow of teams, managing the pace and tempo.

• They fully understand the environment they work in and can prioritise the most important or highest value tasks.

• Has the ability to reflect, and be resilient

Some of our benefits

• Flexible, hybrid working model
• Inclusive culture and environment, check out our Glassdoor reviews
• £6,500 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
• 30 days holiday + bank holidays
• LinkedIn learning access
• Bonus potential (performance and business-related)
• Up to 25% discount on Very.co.uk

• Matched pension up to 6%
• More benefits can be found on our career site

How to apply

Please note that the talent acquisition team are managing this vacancy directly, and if successful in securing this role, you may be required to undertake a credit, CIFAS and DBS check.

What happens next?

Our talent acquisition team will be in touch if you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like we’re a good match, we’ll share your CV with the hiring manager to review. Our interview process is tailored to each role and can be in-person or held remotely.

You can expect a two-stage interview process for this position:

1st stage - An informal 30-45minute video call with the hiring team to discuss your skills and relevant experience. This is a great opportunity to find out more about the role and to ask any questions you may have.

2nd Stage – A one-hour task-based interview which will be relevant to the BAU of the role. This can be held either in-person or remotely.

As an inclusive employer please do let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.

If you'd like to know more about our interviews, you can find out here

Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities

We’re building a culture of everyday inclusion, and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We don’t discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.

We want our recruitment process to be accessible to everyone. If you need reasonable adjustments to apply, interview, or perform a role, let us know via talentacquisition@theverygroup.com. We’ll be happy to support you.

We’re proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer and have nine brilliant colleague networks - including DAWN (Disability Awareness at Very) and Think (Neurodiversity at Very) - that are helping us make Very an even more inclusive place to work.