Senior Digital Portfolio Manager at Department for Work & Pensions, UK Office/Remote, 6 Months, £Contract Rate

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK's biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.

Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:

• Help people to move into work and support those already in work to progress, with the aim of increasing overall workforce participation
• Help people to plan and save for later life, while providing a safety net for those who need it now
• Provide effective, efficient, and innovative services to the millions of claimants who rely on us every day, including the most vulnerable in society
• Improve experience of our services while maximising value for money for the taxpayer.

In this role you will work as part of Portfolio to support, coach and provide capability to delivery teams to enable improved planning, prioritisation, application of risk and dependencies across delivery.

As a Senior Digital Portfolio Manager your main responsibilities will be to:

• Provide expert leadership across a portfolio of projects on their delivery progress using defined methods for each project tackling issues and resource constraints as they are escalated.
• Provide coaching, mentoring and best practice application of project planning and portfolio management across multi-disciplinary delivery teams.
• Provide analysis and updates to senior members of the senior leadership regarding the progress and potential issues within your portfolio.
• Maintain a view of key project factors such as outcomes, costs, risks, dependencies and priorities across the portfolio, ensuring they are documented appropriately.
• Provide key inputs into the development and embedding of Portfolio Standards across your delivery Portfolio.
• Identity and unblock issues and risks as they arise, often working with stakeholders to remove blockers and advising others within your scope on appropriate methods to enable projects to progress faster.
• Play a key role in the development of project plans ensuring plans, timescales and deliverables are aligned to expected benefits, outcomes and timescales.
• Provide facilitation and secretariat support to appropriate meetings and governance forums. Ensuring effective co-ordination of all administration, presentational material and co-ordinate briefing and preparation for the chair and provide clear audit trail of decisions, actions and outcomes.
• Embed data visualisation dashboards to track delivery progress and KPIs within your portfolio.
• Support implementing portfolio improvements. Supporting the development of standardised processes, engagement and the delivery of change communications to support changes in the portfolio community.

Essential:

• Proven experience managing a portfolio of projects and/or programmes, ensuring successful delivery against strategic objectives.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to build strong relationships across multiple levels of an organisation.
• Ability to quickly integrate into a team and make an immediate impact in a fast-paced environment.
• Demonstrated capability to coach, mentor, and share knowledge with colleagues to support wider team development.
• Experience working within Agile delivery environments and applying Agile methodologies effectively.

Desirable:

• Experience delivering digital transformation projects or programmes.
• Previous experience working within the Public Sector.
• Knowledge and practical experience of ServiceNow.
• Experience using Power BI for reporting, analytics, and data-driven decision-making.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Covenant

DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.