Delivery & Operations Manager

About The Role

Salary -75,600.00 - 140,000.00

Contract type - Permanent

Working pattern - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the Bracknell head office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business.

Key Responsibilities

• Operational & Service Governance: Act as the single point of contact and "service owner" for the availability, performance, resilience, continuous improvement, and secure operation of applications to contracted service levels and agreements.
• Strategic Direction & Leadership: Set clear intent, direction, and guardrails to achieve outcomes aligned with business area strategies, while empowering and supporting 2 direct reports to make decisions and resolve challenges.
• Supplier & Vendor Management: Provide governance and leadership for strategic, key, and preferred vendors. Build strong relationships to ensure delivery to service levels, alignment with strategic objectives, and accurate demand forecasting.
• Financial & Budgetary Control: Manage financials and own the operating budget within your area, balancing costs, benefits, risks, capacity constraints, and timescales to deliver maximum value across 3rd parties and contracts.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Collaboration: Engage with senior stakeholders and key roles across the portfolio to drive and influence change activity. Own handoffs, manage escalations, and coordinate key messages across functions and external parties.
• Continuous Improvement & Metrics: Own the delivery of detailed Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) on a quarterly basis, tracking operational metrics, change timelines, quality, and business case benefit realisations.
• Experience working with commercial retail systems, including price, promotions, range & space, product master data, B2B.

Essential Skills/experience You’ll Need

• Working in a matrix organisation where collaboration is key to successfully delivering initiatives and operating discreetly.
• DevOps & Product Team Leadership: Proven experience setting up and running DevOps-based Product teams within a fast-paced environment.
• Supplier & Vendor Management: Strong experience in Supplier Performance Management (SPM) and Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) across multiple third-party vendors.
• People & Change Leadership: Demonstrated experience in people management and leading teams confidently and competently through technical and organizational change.
• Executive Communication & Influence: Outstanding communication skills with the ability to translate complex IT matters into non-technical language, alongside a track record of extensive stakeholder management up to Exec level.
• Critical Thinking & Commercial Acumen: Advanced ability to use data and evidence to develop thinking, form reasoned judgements, manage operational budgets, and mitigate delivery risks.
• Drive for Innovation: A clear passion for innovation and change, with demonstrable evidence of delivering operational excellence and disruptive/innovative thinking.

Desirable Skills/experience You May Have

• Retail & Supply Chain Expertise: Relevant portfolio knowledge and experience working within complex Retail or Supply Chain organisations.
• Disparate Area Leadership: Experience leading technology and delivery operations across highly disparate business areas or highly fragmented multi-vendor environments.

About The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect.

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective.

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.

Important points to note

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.