Programme Delivery Lead at Riviera Travel, Burton Upon Trent/Remote, 12 Months+, £590-£680 per day (Outside IR35)

Job Title: Programme Delivery Lead
Contract: 12 + Month
Day Rate: £590-£680 (DOE) Outside IR35
Location: Burton Upon Trent 2x office days Hybrid Working
Start Date: Within the next 3-6 weeks (ideally)

Riviera Travel is a leader in creating exceptional travel experiences, known for its high-quality escorted tours, river cruises, and solo holidays. With a strong heritage and a passion for detail, every journey is carefully designed to deliver memorable moments from start to finish. Joining Riviera means being part of a collaborative and people focused business where your work directly contributes to bringing unforgettable experiences to life for customers across the UK and beyond.

The Role
At Riviera Travel, we are embarking on a significant Booking Platform Replacement Programme that will transform a core part of our business and customer experience. We're looking for an experienced Programme Delivery Lead to become the delivery engine behind one of our most important strategic initiatives.
As the Programme Delivery Lead you will be energised by delivery and execution, not just governance and stakeholder management, and you’ll enjoy bringing clarity and control to complex transformation programmes.
You will be working at the heart of programme delivery, navigating complexity, managing interdependencies, challenging assumptions, identifying delivery risks and ensuring every moving part stays on track. You will provide the delivery grip, co-ordination and control required to successfully deliver a complex business and technology transformation programme.
This is an opportunity to play a pivotal role in a high-profile transformation programme where your impact will be visible every day.

What You'll Be Doing
You'll own the integrated delivery plan across multiple workstreams, suppliers and business functions, ensuring milestones, dependencies and delivery confidence are actively managed throughout the programme lifecycle.
Key responsibilities include:

• Create and maintain an integrated master plan covering all workstreams, supplier activity, internal IT delivery, testing, migration, business readiness, cutover and hypercare.
• Define and manage programme milestones, delivery stages, control points, dependencies and critical path activities.
• Establish and operate programme delivery controls including RAID, action management, dependency management and delivery confidence reporting.
• Challenge workstream plans, assumptions, estimates and delivery forecasts where they are not sufficiently evidenced.
• Coordinate and align Business Solution, Technical Solution, Integration, Testing and Data Migration workstreams.
• Operate the weekly Steering Group as the primary programme delivery control forum.
• Produce Programme Board reports, dashboards and decision-support information.
• Ensure supplier deliverables, milestones and forecasts are integrated into programme controls.
• Drive proactive identification and resolution of cross-workstream risks, issues and dependencies.
• Maintain accurate forecasting of milestone achievement and programme delivery confidence.
• Support governance, assurance reviews and programme recovery activities as required.
• Provide early warning of emerging delivery threats and recommend corrective actions.

Skills & Experience
You'll bring extensive experience delivering large scale technology and business transformation programmes where success depended on strong planning, dependency management and delivery control.

• Extensive experience in programme delivery management, programme controls, major project delivery or equivalent leadership roles.
• Demonstrable experience creating integrated plans and managing critical paths within complex transformation programmes.
• Strong background in systems implementation, business transformation, supplier management and technology delivery.
• Expert knowledge of milestone management, dependency mapping, RAID management and delivery assurance.
• Ability to challenge constructively and operate with credibility across senior stakeholders, suppliers and technical teams.
• Experience of Agile, Scrum and hybrid delivery approaches.
• Experience of delivering ERP, CRM, reservations, booking, commerce or other core operational platforms desirable.
• MSP, PMP, PgMP, AgilePM or equivalent certification desirable.