Lead Project Manager at Achievement Awards Group

• We are seeking an experienced Lead Project Manager to drive end-to-end project delivery at our Westlake, Tokai office. The role oversees strategic planning, team coordination, stakeholder engagement, and execution of key initiatives to ensure on-time, high-quality results. Strong leadership and communication skills essential.

Job Description
Role Purpose

• The Lead Project Manager is responsible for leading complex, high-impact technology initiatives across the full project lifecycle from conception through to delivery and optimisation.
• Operating at a mid to senior level, this role bridges the gap between technical teams, business stakeholders and client requirements, ensuring that projects are delivered on time, within scope, and to the highest quality standards.
• The role combines deep technical understanding with project leadership, strategic alignment, and stakeholder engagement. This position plays a pivotal role in shaping technical strategy, influencing architectural decisions, and fostering a high-performing, collaborative team culture that objectively evaluates client needs against business priorities.
• While this role is not primarily hands on coding, a strong technical understanding is essential. The ability to dive into technical detail, understand code and architecture concepts, and guide the team on best practices is key to effective decision making and leadership.

Key Responsibilities

Project Planning & Execution

• Define project scope, objectives, and success criteria in collaboration with stakeholders and technical leads.
• Develop detailed project plans, including timelines, budgets, resource allocation, and risk mitigation strategies.
• Facilitate delivery amongst cross-functional teams comprising business analysts, developers, Software Testers, DevOps, and Release Manager

Technical Coordination & Communication

• Act as the primary liaison between technical teams, business and client stakeholders.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insights for non-technical audiences.
• Review and validate technical specifications, architecture documents, and implementation plans.
• Ensure technical solutions align with business goals and strategic direction.

Agile & Delivery Process Management

• Implement and optimise agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban).
• Facilitate agile ceremonies: daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and backlog grooming.
• Monitor team velocity, identify delivery bottlenecks, and drive continuous improvement.
• Maintain comprehensive project documentation and stakeholder reporting. Rate within a hybrid model

Risk Management & Problem Resolution

• Proactively identify and manage project risks, dependencies, and blockers.
• Develop and manage contingency plans and escalate critical issues as needed.
• Coordinate incident response and resolution across technical teams.
• Ensure post-implementation reviews are conducted and facilitate lessons learnt outcomes.
• Drive process and/ or product improvements – identified by yourself or raised by the team - that will facilitate increased efficiencies and productivity within the team.
• Participate and facilitate Root Cause Analysis investigations and drive identified process and/or product enhancements.
• Drive remediation of security vulnerabilities in line with Compliance and Governance procedures.

Stakeholder Engagement & Leadership

• Build strong relationships with Technical teams and both internal and Client stakeholders.
• Present project updates, risks, and recommendations to senior leadership, governance forums and Steering committees, where applicable.
• Negotiate timelines, scope, and resource allocation across competing priorities.

Leadership

• Ensure client facing projects are aligned with client expectations.
• Have oversight over client facing projects and their relevant internal primary client-facing contacts.
• Facilitate client communications, reporting, and feedback loops throughout the project lifecycle.
• Align client requirements with internal capabilities and strategic priorities.
• Build long-term client relationships through consistent delivery and proactive engagement.
• Drive internal improvements.
• Lead a team of Business Analysts at various levels.

Team Cohesion & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Ensure your leadership fosters a collaborative, high-trust team environment that values transparency and accountability.
• Promote shared ownership of project outcomes and cross-functional alignment.
• Encourage objective evaluation of client requests, balancing innovation with feasibility.
• Drive adoption of new technologies, tools, and delivery practices, where applicable.

Job Requirements
 Knowledge, skills and attributes:

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to work in a team-orientated, collaborative environment
• Excellent planning, organizing and time management skills
• Deep knowledge and understanding of waterfall project management life cycle processes and agile methodologies
• Excellent analytical skills couple with attention to detail and accuracy
• Ability to coordinate the activities of various stakeholders to ensure project delivery
• Excellent knowledge of project management software tools, methodologies and best practices
• Ability to manage conflict to a win-win outcome
• Excellent presentation, facilitation and meeting skills

Educational Background

• A degree in business management or similar with a project management qualification
• At least 5 years in a Senior Project management role
• Technical Skills: Proficiency in project management tools like JIRA, Confluence, MS Project, Agile and waterfall methodologies,
• Business Skills: Proficiency in Microsoft suite: Word, Excel. ppt etc.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills at both a team and Executive level;
• Strong collaboration skills and track record of achieving project delivery success; conflict resolution
• Interpersonal skills: Solutions driven, versatile and adaptable