Principal Technical Project Manager (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds & London)

We are seeking a Principal Technical Project Manager to support our Engineering Chapter in driving improvements to tooling, platforms and ways of working within the Software Delivery Lifecycle (SDLC) and live operations across the service and company. In this position you will work closely with the Director of Engineering and core Engineering Chapter teams: Developer Platform, Test Enablement and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). You will play a vital role in ensuring that the objectives of those teams (and the initiatives which support them) are clearly identified and prioritised with the product managers and delivered effectively. You will engage with stakeholders across the business, ensuring that central Engineering Chapter work aligns with business needs, is communicated effectively and that outcomes are aligned with expectations. This principal role requires someone with strong understanding of modern SDLC practices, excellent stakeholder engagement skills, who can bring a collaborative and agile approach to driving delivery across multiple strands of work. Candidates should be highly experienced in working in an ambiguous environment, learning new principles and technologies to be able to work effectively with teams and engage credibly with the wider organisation. They should also be comfortable with balancing between meeting delivery commitments and being responsive to emerging organisational needs and priorities. Everyday responsibilities include: - Own the end-to-end delivery of key technical workstreams within a programme, taking accountability for the successful completion of critical delivery outcomes. - Lead the management of OKRs and initiatives across Engineering Chapter teams, including the capture, definition, tracking and reporting of objectives and key results. - Partner with Product Managers and Service Owners to validate requirements and ensure delivery is aligned to agreed timelines, budgets and OKRs. - Establish and maintain delivery plans, monitoring progress against roadmaps and communicating or escalating where delivery moves away from agreed commitments. - Ensure delivery progress is accurately reflected in operational tools, including Monday.com, to support effective planning, visibility and reporting. - Identify, manage and regularly review risks, actions, issues and dependencies, working collaboratively with teams to resolve challenges and maintain delivery momentum. - Prepare clear status updates and contribute to programme board reports and governance forums, ensuring progress, risks and decisions are communicated effectively. - Establish and use appropriate decision-making structures, helping teams make timely, well-informed decisions where uncertainty needs to be resolved. - Implement effective governance across delivery, cybersecurity, data quality, data protection, IT requirements, accreditations and relevant internal and external standards. - Build trusted relationships with internal and external stakeholders, adapting communication to reflect different commercial, technical and business considerations. - Ensure contributors are clear on what needs to be delivered, by when, and that responsible stakeholders remain informed throughout the delivery lifecycle. - Engage with technical and operational governance groups, including the Engineering Steering Group, to shape, review and ratify key engineering decisions where appropriate. - Lead, motivate and support contributors to delivery, including in matrix environments where there is no direct line management authority. - Promote service-oriented thinking across Engineering Chapter teams, helping teams remain focused on user needs, service outcomes and measurable impact. - Support supplier engagement and procurement activity in line with Genomics England governance, including supplier frameworks and relevant approval routes. - Contribute to business cases, budget planning and spend monitoring, ensuring items and services are approved, budgeted for and managed through appropriate governance. - Line manage and support Delivery Chapter colleagues, including pastoral support, performance reviews, development planning, training and performance management where required. - Contribute as a senior member of the Delivery Chapter, supporting best practice, continuous improvement and active participation in Chapter meetings and away days. Skills and experience for success: - Proven track record of project and programme delivery from initiation to business as usual. - Agile and adaptive project, risk, and issue management with a proactive and outcome-focused approach. - Strong communication skills, engaging effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences. - Commercial awareness to support informed decision-making. - Ability to work in a highly regulated environment with increasing compliance needs. - Stakeholder management, building trusted relationships across teams and leadership levels. - Confident decision-making with sound judgement on escalation and risk management. - Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, accessible language for non-technical stakeholders. - Collaborative approach to problem-solving, balancing delivery priorities with business needs. - Track record of line management directly or in a matrix organisation. Awareness of the following technologies and concepts: - The principles and benefits of Internal Developer Platforms and Platform Engineering. - Quality Assurance best-practices e.g. shift-left, contract-testing and Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). - Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and practices. - Measures of engineering maturity e.g. Developer Experience (DevEx) and DORA. - Modern CI/CD platforms e.g. GitLab (preferred), GitHub and awareness of the concepts and benefits of Continuous Delivery. - Observability / monitoring platforms e.g. DataDog (preferred) or New Relic. - AWS services e.g. EC2, ECS/Fargate, S3, Lambda, RDS, VPC and management tools including AWS Organisations, Identity Center, Inspector and Security Hub. - Infrastructure-as-code tools e.g. Terraform (preferred) or CloudFormation.