Senior Delivery Lead

Permanent/Full Time

Department: Delivery

Reports to: Principal Delivery Lead / Head of Delivery

Salary: £60,000 - £75,000

AKQA Leap are seeking an experienced, hands-on Senior Delivery Lead. We’re looking for someone that has agency experience kickstarting and leading complex and large product teams.

About Us

AKQA Leap are digital product specialists within the AKQA Group network (WPP), with studios in London and Bristol.

We believe that quality is the fastest path to success. So whether we're launching, fixing or scaling a product, we get it right the first time. Some call it the magic touch. We call it quality at speed.

For over a decade, we’ve been designing, developing, and launching quality digital products for businesses like Google, Spotify and Vodafone.

People-focused. Curious. Always growing. These are just some of the values AKQA Leap upholds to cultivate an open, committed, and inclusive studio where you can be you. From the moment we meet, we’ll do our best to get to know you and understand what drives you. Our goal? To empower you to thrive and develop.

We aspire to push boundaries and craft purposeful products that people love. What truly matters is what you create, not where you create it—whether you feel in the flow working from home, or seek some company at our London or Bristol studios, we give you the freedom to work in a location and in the way that inspires you most.

To find out more about us visit https://www.akqa.com/leap/

About the Role

Senior Delivery Leads at AKQA Leap are responsible for creating and leading complex and large product teams. This is a pivotal role to our success - Delivery Leads are the champions of the client and the team. 

Delivery Leads seek to maximise their teams’ outcomes by:

• Building effective teams - Defining and optimising how the team works
• Creating happy teams - Nurturing team and client health 
• Ensuring commercial success - Managing the financial engagement 

Our Delivery Leads are accountable for delivery methodology and for leading a team to ensure timely, accurate and effective delivery. 

They have a depth and breadth of experience leading product teams and an excellent working knowledge of delivery. They are able to mentor less experienced Delivery Leads and contribute to building the Delivery community at Leap.

Accountabilities

Building effective teams - Delivery Leads are learning how to be flexible, responding to the needs of their product teams and identifying the ways of working that deliver the best possible outcomes. Their growing knowledge and experience of Delivery allows them to implement a range of different Delivery Frameworks.

• Creating happy teams - Delivery Leads are strong communicators and relationship builders. They monitor client and team health, responding to issues and conflicts and implementing changes to help create happy teams.
• Ensuring commercial success - Delivery Leads are responsible for managing contracts and the overall commercial performance. Working closely with the support of their line manager, they draft contracts and escalate commercial issues and risks when appropriate.
• Community involvement, internal projects and initiatives - Delivery Leads inform and contribute to the community strategy. They support the rollout of initiatives and may also take part in other internal projects and initiatives to help further their learning and development.
• Line management, mentorship and hiring - line management and mentoring is not expected at the Senior Delivery Lead level. As the team grows, Senior Delivery Leads take part in hiring interviews and offer feedback and perspective to the hiring team. Senior Delivery Leads also support the onboarding of new team members to the wider Delivery Community and project teams.
• Supporting New Business and Marketing - from time to time, Senior Delivery Leads provide support to the New Business and Marketing teams. This can involve reviewing New Business proposals and contracts.

Role Responsibilities

• Being aware of the outcomes that the product teams are working towards
• Defining the ways of working and optimising to deliver the best possible outcomes
• Communicating the chosen approach effectively so product teams (including clients) are aware and on board with the approach.
• Balancing speed and quality - ensuring it is right for the needs of the product
• Tracking and reporting velocity 
• Initiating and sunsetting projects
• Identifying and mitigating risks, preventing issues from leading to preventable escalations
• Ensure Backlog management, championing data driven prioritisation
• Support programme delivery within our larger account teams
• Represent the authoritative source of all delivery status information on projects at all times
• Enable continuous improvement and high impact outcomes through the application of Agile methodologies
• Creating and updating product documentation to make onboarding and off-boarding easier, and to ensure that the knowledge transfer remains efficient within the team
• Identifying and solving problems, blockers and bottlenecks
• Financial reporting and forecasting
• Facilitating ceremonies, meetings and project kick-offs (involving team members to take active roles as appropriate)
• Act as the key liaison between internal and client teams
• Measure and report on team health and efficacy
• Coach and mentor others on Agile ways of working,
• Facilitating delivery of new business proposals and pitches
• Identifying risks, blockers and dependencies
• Creating budget and SoWs
• Facilitating and participating in the qualification of new leads to ensure varied level of experience across all disciplines is represented in the process
• Supporting the creation of decks and other materials for proposals and pitches
• Participating in client pitches and presentations
• Networking at events
• Authoring content and material for AKQA Leap’s channels, in alignment with the marketing strategy

About You

At AKQA Leap, we often have engagements requiring a more nuanced delivery role; it may be that your coaching and scrum mastery skills and experience are called upon for a particular engagement, on other engagements, it may be that your project management experience comes to the fore. You may be more comfortable with, or have a preference for, one particular aspect of delivery, but as highly experienced all-rounders, our Senior Delivery Leads are expected to be flexible. The Senior Delivery Lead is responsible for initiating the project with the team including communicating the chosen approach effectively, so teams (including client teams) are thoroughly aware and understand the approach.

All delivery roles are client facing so we require our Senior Delivery Leads to be strong communicators and excellent relationship builders, at all levels.  The Delivery Lead manages end-to-end engagements and projects, liaising directly with clients and client teams to make sure all processes are working, the methodology is understood, and all reporting and administrative tasks are completed on time. 

You Should Have

• Experience in day to day commercial management of engagements, budgeting, tracking, noticing, flagging and taking corrective measures to avoid overburn or possible gaps in revenue recognition. Maintaining accurate team and budget forecasting and ensuring accurate timesheets 
• Experience in ensuring the commercial viability of projects, from scoping through to delivery, including inputting into and creating SOWs, taking into account agreed financial/delivery model to reflect the payment terms, schedule and deliverables 
• Experience in working with Product Managers and able to support effective product planning and effective Product Backlog management
• Ability to coach the team, and clients, in environments where agile is not fully understood
• Ability to act as key liaison between internal and client teams
• Ability to represent the authoritative source of all delivery status information on your projects at all times
• Ability to measure and report on team health and efficacy
• Understanding or experience in agile and lean design and development approaches
• Strong communication skills - The role requires working closely with key stakeholders throughout the client organisation and beyond (partners, other agencies, and other 3rd parties), so you must be able to communicate in specific contexts to different people of varying technical expertise, about the project at any given time

Ideally Also

• Ability to facilitate conflict resolution, decision making, and project kick-offs (involving team members to take active roles as appropriate)
• Ability to proactively mitigate risk, prevent issues from leading to escalations in collaboration with the teams
• Experience creating and updating product documentation to make onboarding and offboarding easier, and to ensure that the knowledge transfer remains efficient within the team
• Refined prioritisation skills - ability to focus on the “right” things, not just the “most urgent” things
• High levels of emotional intelligence, personal resilience and empathy. Self-motivation and the ability to motivate others
• Self-motivation and the ability to motivate others
• Patient, empathetic, direct conflict resolution

We know that no candidate will be the exact match for all we’ve listed, so we would encourage you to apply if you feel you might be close but not a perfect match for all of the role’s requirements.

What We Offer

We work hard to be a great employer - a place where our people are proud to work. In the past, we were officially recognised as a Best Company to Work For, named within the Top 100 Best Small Companies to Work For.

Here are some of the benefits we offer: 

• Flexi leave (within reason), plus Birthday Off
• Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Pay
• Paid Parental Bereavement leave
• Volunteering Days
• Flexible benefits package (cash sum per month)
• Private medical and dental insurance
• Enhanced competitive pension scheme
• Annual learning budget
• A financial contribution to a tech purchase 
• Mental Health and Wellbeing Support
• Employee Assistance Programmes
• Occupational Sick Pay
• Life Assurance
• Income Protection Assurance

What Happens Next

If this role and AKQA Leap sounds like a good fit please apply and someone from our People Team will be in touch shortly.  

Inclusivity

We want to make our hiring as inclusive as possible; this job description has been reviewed by a range of employees and has passed a neutral language check. We have also reviewed our hiring process to make sure it offers flexibility to candidates who need it.

We welcome you to inform us confidentially at peopleteam@akqaleap.com if you require any accommodations to be able to fully participate in our recruitment process. 

We're trying to do better and would love your feedback. If you think there's anything we could improve or places you think we should advertise, then please let us know.

Location: Our office is based in London and we anticipate this role to be hybrid with a mixture of remote and office based work.