Description
A Principal Project Manager at Heathrow, will provide senior leadership across a portfolio of complex infrastructure projects at Heathrow. The role is accountable for leading and developing Project Managers, providing first‑line assurance, and acting as the escalation point to ensure delivery remains aligned to Heathrow’s strategic, commercial, and operational priorities.
Operating in a highly regulated, live airport environment, the role balances safety, performance, cost, risk, and benefits while maintaining strong stakeholder relationships and driving high‑performing supply chain outcomes. The Principal Project Manager plays a critical role in building delivery capability, protecting operational resilience, and ensuring projects deliver long‑term value. You will communicate with confidence across all levels of the organisation, navigating competing priorities and influencing decisions that protect operational performance and maximise project value.
Responsibilities
- Building capability by leading and developing Project Managers and technical specialists, deploying resources effectively and promoting a culture of safe, accountable, and inclusive delivery.
- Acting as the single point of leadership for your portfolio, defining clear scope, securing appropriate resourcing, and maintaining control of cost, time, risk, and benefits across the project lifecycle.
- Building strong internal and external relationships to strengthen Heathrow’s delivery capability and ensure programme performance meets commercial and operational expectations.
- Providing first‑line assurance across project documentation, challenging proposals to ensure plans are robust, portfolio‑aligned, and deliver agreed outcomes safely, efficiently, and to the required quality.
- Leading and holding accountability for supply chain performance, enabling teams to operate effectively, work efficiently, and achieve consistently high‑performing delivery.
- Leading and taking accountability for team health, safety, and wellbeing, and ensuring Construction Design and Management Regulations (CDM) duties are met across all activities.
Qualifications
- Highly effective communicator, with strong interpersonal, coordination, and stakeholder management skills, able to work effectively across multicultural and multidisciplinary teams.
- Comfortable working across all levels of the organisation, highly effective in conflict resolution, building relationships with key stakeholders. Has a clear awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, and can operate across a diverse range of personalities.
- Proven experience in autonomously leading, managing and developing diverse teams on large Infrastructure projects or programmes.
- Good understanding of how to balance operational, commercial, and strategic priorities to ensure programmes deliver measurable value, optimise cost efficiency, and support long term business performance.
- Experienced practitioner of contracts (ideally NEC) and supply chain performance management, including developing proposals for pricing, setting up and executing contracts, undertaking tenders, and administrating in delivery including change.
- Experienced practitioner in all aspects of project controls, including developing project forecasts and understanding earned value, programme reliability, projected outturn costs etc.
- Experienced practitioner in Project and Business risk management, including identification, assessment and development of mitigation strategies. Demonstrable experience of how this has been actively applied to support project success.
Ideally you will have
- Degree qualification in an appropriate discipline, or equivalent academic achievement.
- Working towards APM Chartered Project Professional (CPP), Achieved APM PMQ or equivalent.
- Achieved NEC accreditation.
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