Interim Scaled Agile Delivery Director - Contract - Outside IR35 - Remote at SixteenFifty, London, 6 Months, £Contract Rate

Senior Delivery Lead

My client is seeking an experienced Senior Delivery Lead to improve delivery performance, strengthen agile capability and embed outcome-focused ways of working across a complex, multi-team programme.

This is a hands-on leadership role working closely with Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Service Owners to improve how work is defined, prioritised and delivered. You will help teams take greater ownership of value, establish consistent delivery practices and achieve measurable outcomes at a sustainable pace.

Key Responsibilities of the Senior Delivery Lead

• Lead improvements in delivery across the programme, creating a consistent and practical approach to planning, prioritisation, governance and continuous improvement.

• Coach Scrum Masters and Product Owners, strengthening their capability, challenging ineffective practices and embedding accountability for outcomes.

• Ensure initiatives and epics have clear objectives, outcome hypotheses and success measures linked to wider organisational goals.

• Develop a platform-as-a-product mindset, measuring value through adoption, reliability, efficiency, cost and reduced lead times for teams using platform services.

• Establish a clear hierarchy of initiatives, epics and stories, supported by consistent Definitions of Ready and Done and well-structured Jira backlogs.

• Embed delivery disciplines covering work-in-progress limits, cycle times, quality, prioritisation, dependencies and risk management.

• Make cross-team dependencies visible, supporting clear ownership and coordinated action.

• Introduce meaningful delivery, flow, reliability and value measures using real delivery data, applying metrics to support learning and improvement.

• Work alongside teams in refinement, planning, reviews and retrospectives, demonstrating effective practices and building lasting capability.

• Align existing agile coaching and portfolio enablement capabilities, providing clear direction and a proportionate approach to coordination across teams.

Skills and Experience of the Senior Delivery Lead

• Proven experience leading agile delivery across multiple teams within complex organisations.

• A strong track record of coaching Scrum Masters and Product Owners and improving behaviours, capability and delivery outcomes.

• The ability to influence senior stakeholders and teams, including in resistant or siloed environments.

• Strong knowledge of backlog governance, prioritisation, Definitions of Ready and Done, work-in-progress limits, flow and cycle-time management.

• Experience in outcome-focused product management, benefits realisation and OKR-style goal setting.

• Confidence using DORA and flow metrics to identify improvements while maintaining trust and sustainable delivery.

• A practical, adaptable leadership style, with the judgement to introduce the right level of structure for each team.

Desirable Experience of the Senior Delivery Lead

• Platform or infrastructure delivery and an understanding of internal platforms as products.

• Reshaping agile functions to provide effective coaching and enablement.

• Lean portfolio management, Kanban and value-stream management.

• Lightweight approaches to scaling and coordination, such as Flight Levels. SAFe experience may be useful but is not essential.

This opportunity would suit a senior delivery professional who combines practical coaching with strong product and delivery disciplines, and can help teams build lasting improvements in performance.

To apply, please send your CV outlining your experience of leading delivery improvement across multiple teams.