Programme Delivery Manager | Contract at hedgehog lab, Manchester, £Contract Rate

Contract | Outside IR35 | Mid-September to mid-January | Flexible, within 50 miles of an office

The opportunity

A fast-growing healthcare software company is building the platform that thousands of clinicians use every day to run their practices and care for patients. A complex, multi-team programme is heading towards launch, and it needs a delivery leader to bring it together and land it.

This is a contract role for someone who's at their best when the picture is complicated and the stakes are real.

You'll take full ownership of delivery across the client, our engineers, QA and a third-party supplier: several teams building across OutSystems and Workato, with a live launch date and heavy cross-team dependencies. Your job is to turn that into one delivery team, one plan and one path to launch.

What You'll Own

• The integrated delivery plan and critical path to launch
• Daily cross-team stand-ups across client, engineering, QA and supplier
• Blockers and dependencies, driven to resolution
• RAID, with an owner and deadline on every risk, issue and action
• Backlog readiness and acceptance criteria, with Product and Engineering
• Releases and integration readiness between teams
• Concise stakeholder updates on progress, risk and decisions
• This is delivery leadership for someone who drives outcomes, not someone who updates a plan and reports on it.
  
  

What you'll bring

A track record of taking at-risk programmes and bringing them under control. This is the heart of the role.

Senior Delivery Manager or Programme Delivery Manager level, with a strong software and digital delivery background

Delivery across multiple teams and, ideally, multiple suppliers

Strong dependency, RAID and critical-path management

Creating structure where ownership or governance is immature

Senior stakeholder management, with the credibility to challenge suppliers, engineers and leadership

A good grasp of how Product, Engineering and QA work together

We care more about recovery experience than formal PM qualifications.

Nice to have

• Consultancy or agency background, client-facing delivery leadership
• SaaS or platform delivery, integration-heavy programmes
• OutSystems and Workato experience
• Healthcare or other regulated-sector experience
• Inheriting technical debt or taking programmes through go-live
• You'll need enough technical literacy to challenge engineering teams without making the technical decisions yourself.
  
  

Is this you?

You've walked into complex programmes before and left them under control. You get to root cause fast, and you know when a problem needs a process, when it needs a decision, and when it just needs someone to take ownership and sort it.

You hold suppliers and engineers to their commitments without losing the room, and you keep a steady hand as a launch date approaches.

You'd rather clear the blocker than write it up.

Why hedgehog lab?

You'll be joining a consultancy with 20 years of experience trusted by global brands, working at the intersection of AI and software engineering.

You'll be part of a community of talented people who challenge each other, share knowledge, and care about delivering meaningful outcomes for our clients and the citizens they serve.

The details

Whilst there's no set number of days you're required to be in the office each week, we really value spending time together in person, both as a team and with our clients. There will be times when we'll need you to be in one of our offices or at a client site for important meetings, workshops and key moments.

To make that work, you'll need to be based within 50 miles of one of our offices in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester or London.

How To Apply

Apply via the advert. We're moving quickly for a mid-September start, so if your experience fits we'll be in touch soon.