Project Delivery Manager

The role and the team

The Project Delivery Manager is responsible for the successful planning, coordination, and delivery of complex, cross-team initiatives and projects that span multiple product teams, external dependencies, and organisational boundaries.

This role ensures that interdependent product teams remain aligned, clear on shared outcomes, and execute against agreed-upon milestones without compromising the integrity of the Product Strategy.

Key responsibilities

1. Cross-Team Coordination & Dependency Management

●        Lead Project Planning: Facilitate the initial planning and decomposition of large initiatives into manageable work streams, involving relevant Product Managers (PMs) and Engineering Managers (EMs).

●        Dependency Mapping: Proactively identify, map, track, and manage complex inter-team and third-party dependencies that could block delivery.

●        Boundary Management: Act as the primary liaison for initiatives involving teams outside the core product structure (e.g., Legal, Finance, Marketing, third-party vendors), ensuring their needs are translated into technical and product requirements for the teams.

●        Risk Mitigation: Identify potential delivery risks related to cross-team handoffs, external commitments, and resource bottlenecks, developing clear mitigation strategies.

2. Delivery Coaching & Process Alignment

●        Project delivery management: Coach PMs and EMs on best practices for managing their team backlogs, ensuring that cross-initiative work is prioritised correctly alongside their discovery work and team objectives.

●        Cadence & Alignment: Facilitate cross-team synchronisation meetings (e.g., Scrum of Scrums, Project Increment planning) to ensure alignment on milestones, interfaces, and shared quality standards.

●        Backlog Management: Work with the senior product representatives to ensure a single, transparent, and prioritised backlog for the overall project, ensuring clarity on scope and shared definition of success.

●        Improvement Facilitation: Drive continuous improvement across the delivery lifecycle by identifying bottlenecks and non-value-add activities that affect multiple teams.

3. Reporting and Communication

●        Project Status: Maintain clear, concise, and timely reporting on Project health, progress against milestones, and key risks to senior leadership and stakeholders. Focus reports on outcomes and delivery cadence rather than just hours spent.

●        Stakeholder Communication: Manage the expectations of internal and external stakeholders regarding delivery timelines, scope changes, and trade-offs necessitated by the agile approach.

●        Escalation Path: Serve as the first point of escalation for PMs and EMs when they encounter cross-team or organisational roadblocks that they cannot resolve independently.

This Role is NOT Responsible For

●        Product Strategy: Defining what the teams build or the ultimate customer value (Product Manager's domain).

●        Resource Allocation: Direct management of engineering staff (Engineering Manager's domain).

●        Individual Team Backlog: Dictating the daily work or priorities of a single, non-project-related team.

●        Detailed Technical Design: Deciding on the specific technical implementation of the solution (Engineering team's domain).

Skills, experience and attitudes

●        Experience: 5+ years of experience in a Program/Project Management or Delivery role within a technology company, with a focus on software development.

●        Agile Expertise: Deep, practical experience operating in an Agile/Scrum/Kanban environment, preferably at scale (e.g., using frameworks like LeSS, SAFe, or internal scaling models).

●        Product Strategy: Strong understanding of the difference between empowered Product Teams (Discovery + Delivery) and traditional Feature Teams. Must be able to coach teams away from "project thinking".

●        Technical Fluency: Ability to engage confidently with Engineering Managers and Engineering Leads regarding technical dependencies, architecture risks, and deployment pipelines.

●        Influential Leadership: Proven ability to influence and align teams without direct authority. This role is a true leader who enables, rather than dictates.

●        Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, able to tailor messaging for engineering teams, product managers, and executive stakeholders.