pmo lead.

We are seeking an experienced PMO Lead to serve as the client-side owner of programme management office disciplines for a major enterprise transformation: migrating our core ERP environment from SAP ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP.

Reporting directly to the Program Director, you will establish and manage the critical controls layer including integrated planning, financial tracking, RAID management, governance, and quality assurance. This role enables data driven decision making for leadership and the Steering Committee.

You will define the standards, operational cadences, and tooling for co delivery. You will hold the SI accountable to their contractual milestones while maintaining an independent, objective view of overall programme health. This is a delivery assurance and coordination leadership role focused on information integrity, ensuring decisions are well documented, transparent, and tracked to closure.

Programme Governance & Controls

• Framework Management: Establish and run the comprehensive programme governance architecture (Steering Committee, programme boards, and working groups), including managing terms of reference, cadences, and executive documentation.
• Control Ownership: Maintain and update the suite of core control documents (RAID logs, dependency registers, change control, and benefits tracking) aligned with SAP Activate phases.
• Quality Gates: Define and enforce delivery controls, stage-gate criteria, and acceptance standards across both internal and partner teams.
• Single Source of Truth: Manage comprehensive status tracking to ensure all data reported to executive stakeholders is accurate, reconciled, and current.
• Change Management: Supervise the formal change control process for programme scope, timeline, and budget approvals.

Planning & Schedule Management

• Integrated Planning: Consolidate internal, SI, and third-party vendor schedules into a unified critical-path view across the SAP Activate lifecycle (Prepare through to Run).
• Baseline Tracking: Monitor schedule baselines, tracking milestone progress to proactively identify and mitigate schedule slippage.
• Dependency Mapping: Manage complex cross work stream and cross-programme dependencies, proactively resolving scheduling conflicts.
• Resource Forecasting: Oversee capacity and resource tracking for the internal delivery team, ensuring business subject matter expert (SME) commitments are accurately accounted for.

Financial & Commercial Assurance

• Financial Oversight: Manage budget tracking, forecasting, actuals, accruals, and variance analysis, with specific focus on internal vs. vendor cost splits.
• Commercial Tracking: Monitor SI and vendor performance against contract terms, including milestone-based payments, time and materials draw down, and cloud subscription/licensing optimisation during parallel runs.
• Contract Administration: Support Statement of Work (SOW) compliance, flagging commercial risks and tracking delivery against vendor obligations.
• Value Tracking: Maintain the business case benefits realisation register and track leading delivery indicators.

Risk, Issue & Dependency Management

• RAID Management: Direct the programme RAID framework, ensuring risks and issues are actively identified, owned, and mitigated.
• Independent Assurance: Conduct independent risk assessments to maintain an objective client-side view of delivery health, distinct from vendor self-reporting.
• Risk Mitigation: Drive remediation actions to closure and escalate threshold breaches to leadership.
• Failure Mode Prevention: Actively monitor and mitigate typical large-scale ERP risks, such as integration debt, wave slippage, and permanent "temporary" interim states.

Professional Standards & Capability Building

• Methodology Alignment: Apply recognised project management frameworks (e.g., P3O, MSP, PRINCE2/PMBOK) pragmatically alongside SAP Activate.
• Continuous Improvement: Capture lessons learned throughout each phase to optimise organisational PMO capability.
• Information Security: Ensure compliance with data privacy, security, and record-keeping mandates relevant to regulated business environments.
• Team Leadership: Mentor internal PMO team members to uplift capability and promote standardised delivery controls.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Experience: 8–10+ years of dedicated PMO or programme controls experience, including a leadership role on at least one large-scale, multi-vendor business transformation.
• ERP Experience: Proven track record managing PMO disciplines for a major ERP implementation, with specific exposure to SAP S/4HANA and the SAP Activate methodology.
• Integrated Planning: Superior scheduling capability, with experience blending multiple vendor schedules into a single critical path and managing complex dependencies.
• Financial Acumen: Strong background in complex programme financial management, budgeting, forecasting, and tracking vendor delivery against commercial contracts.
• Vendor Management: Deep experience working client-side opposite a major System Integrator within a co-delivery framework, including holding partners accountable to contractual terms.
• Governance & RAID: Expert command of risk management, change control, and corporate governance structures, with the ability to maintain independent delivery assurance.
• Tooling Proficiency: Hands-on experience with modern delivery tools (e.g., SAP Cloud ALM, MS Project/Project for the web, Jira, or equivalent PPM systems).
• Communication: Exceptional communication and presentation skills, capable of producing executive-ready reporting and influencing senior stakeholders without direct authority.
• Industry experience within retail, healthcare, pharmacy, or highly regulated, multi-brand corporate environments.
• Familiarity with SAP RISE Private Cloud Edition commercial frameworks and hyperscaler environments (e.g., AWS).

At Randstad, we are passionate about providing equal employment opportunities and embracing diversity to the benefit of all. We actively encourage applications from any background.