About the role
BT is in the middle of a large modernisation effort that will deliver significant benefits for our customers, our colleagues, society, and our shareholders. Our transformation portfolio, which includes programmes across our Consumer, Business, Networks, Digital, Openreach, International and Corporate units, underpins our strategy and our ambitions for efficiencies and growth. The Group Transformation team plays a critically important role in driving that transformation, for example by shaping BT’s transformation strategy, driving the monthly transformation governance and reporting activities, leading assurance reviews in areas of concern, intervening early within programmes where performance or health are below expectation, and working in close collaboration with our unit transformation teams.
As TMO Lead you will run the Transformation Management Office at the centre of this effort. This is a delivery-facing leadership role where you own the management of the transformation portfolio by being accountable for its alignment to Group and unit strategy, portfolio governance, performance insight, assurance and escalation, while unit sponsors retain accountability for programme delivery and benefits realisation. You will work directly with unit CEOs, unit transformation directors and their leadership teams, providing an authoritative, evidence-based view of portfolio performance, emerging risks and the actions needed to improve delivery. You will also lead the simplification and redesign of our governance and reporting processes, so the TMO spends its time on insight and intervention rather than manual consolidation.
This role was created by bringing together the portfolio governance and programme assurance functions into a single office. You will shape what the combined TMO becomes, with the support of a small team and in collaboration with other members of the Group Transformation team, reporting to the Group Transformation Director.
What you’ll be doing
The role works closely with the Group Transformation Director, Group Finance, unit transformation leads and senior stakeholders up to and including unit CEOs and Group ExCo members. Priorities will shift with the portfolio; the constant is accountability for governance and assurance that keep the portfolio anchored to BT’s strategy, provide reliable insight, enable timely decisions and drive corrective action.
Key elements of the role include:
- Lead the Transformation Management Office: portfolio-level governance, risk and reporting standards for BT’s multi-billion-pound transformation portfolio
- Ensure the transformation portfolio is explicitly and continuously tied to Group and unit strategy, so that every initiative can be traced to a strategic outcome and progress is tracked against our strategy and target-state ambitions
- Own the monthly transformation performance reporting cycle to ExCo and the inputs to Board and subcommittee updates so they are accurate, self-explanatory and decision-oriented
- Lead evidence-based assurance reviews working with our Group Transformation Assurance Manager, setting scope, directing evidence gathering and analysis, presenting robust findings and recommendations, and tracking agreed corrective actions
- Hold units to account for delivery against their commitments: surface deviations early, size risks credibly, and drive resolution with accountable owners without taking ownership away from them
- Lead the simplification and automation of transformation governance and reporting, setting business requirements and priorities in consultation with unit leads, overseeing implementation and adoption, and reducing manual effort while improving insight and decision quality
- Set and continuously improve BT’s transformation delivery standard (stage-gating, benefits and value-driver tracking, dependency management) and embed it across units at very different levels of maturity
- Own the consolidation, challenge, and reconciliation of portfolio financial reporting, partnering with Group Finance on validation of benefits, cost to achieve and eligibility against BT’s externally announced transformation commitment
- Build, lead and develop the TMO team, including flexing capacity into short-notice assurance and intervention work
- Operate as a trusted senior counterpart to unit CEOs, unit transformation directors and their respective teams, engaging them directly on contested delivery matters and balancing challenge with support
Essential skills / experience
- Significant experience leading a transformation management office or assurance function for large-scale transformation (multi-programme, cross-functional, £100m+ scale), with strong governance and delivery discipline, including scoping and running independent reviews of complex programmes, forming evidence-based judgements from programme-level data and fieldwork, and landing difficult findings with accountable senior executives.
- Hands-on delivery experience through sustained accountability for complex programme delivery. Direct ownership of delivery, the financials and the outcome, with the fluency to work at detail level in milestones, dependencies, financials and data.
- An exceptional record of influencing and constructively challenging executive stakeholders, including CEOs and ExCo members, in a large and complex organisation. Able to present contested findings, secure action without formal authority, and maintain trusted relationships, supported by clear, decision-oriented written and verbal communications.
Desirable skills / experience
- Experience designing or standing up a TMO/EPMO, governance framework or transformation delivery standard
- Formal programme delivery accreditation and practice (e.g. PRINCE2/MSP/P3O or equivalent), including structured stage-gated delivery alongside agile methods
- Experience of management-information design and modern portfolio-management tooling
- Knowledge of the technology or telecommunications sectors
- Comfort working with ambiguity, resilience under pressure, and the ability to maintain momentum while structures are still developing
- Strong commercial and financial judgment, including benefits validation, cost-to-achieve analysis, business-case challenge and reconciliation of portfolio reporting with Finance
- Experience leading and developing a specialist team, prioritising competing demands and deploying capacity flexibly across governance, assurance and intervention work.
Our package
Tailored benefits make a real difference. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range to support your growth, wellbeing, and everyday life. You can design the package to suit you and your lifestyle. Your core benefits include:
- Company car scheme (or cash alternative)
- 15% on target annual bonus
- Private healthcare for you and your family
- Access to an online private GP 24/7 for you and your immediate family
- Market-leading paid carers leave with up to 2 weeks off
- Equalised maternity, paternity, and adoption leave – 18 weeks’ full pay and 8 weeks’ half pay
- Discounted EE and BT products, including mobile and broadband
- Market leading Pension scheme – 5% from you and 10% from us
- Holiday purchase scheme
You can select additional benefits, including healthcare, dental, gym memberships and more when you’re ready.
BT Group is the UK’s leading communications group and the holding company behind some of the country’s most recognised brands – including BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. Our customers include consumers, small, medium and large businesses, public sector organisations and other communications providers.
BT Group’s role is about setting direction, unlocking value and creating the conditions for our brands and businesses to thrive.
Having come through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, our focus now is on what comes next – simplifying how we operate, using technology and AI to work smarter, and organising ourselves to serve customers better and grow sustainably. Group teams shape strategy, policy, brand, capital allocation and transformation, helping the whole organisation perform at its best.
We have a singular culture that unites all our people: we are customer-first challengers, who are committed, clear and connected. These behaviours unite us as one team to deliver for our colleagues, our customers, our stakeholders and the country. Joining BT Group means working at the heart of a business that matters to the UK, with the opportunity to shape decisions, influence outcomes and help set the future course of one of the country’s most important companies.
