Harvey Nash
Head of Infrastructure Delivery
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Role: Head of Infrastructure Delivery
Location: Manchester / Hybrid
Salary: £85,000 - £100,000 + benefits + bonus
I’m looking for an experienced Head of Infrastructure Delivery to take ownership of a complex, high-risk technology infrastructure portfolio.
This is a genuine Head-of-level delivery leadership role for someone who can move comfortably from project to programme to portfolio level, with the technical credibility and authority to challenge senior stakeholders, turn around struggling programmes and make delivery happen.
What you’ll be doing
- Own the master critical path, dependencies and integrated plan across the infrastructure portfolio
- Build and maintain a clear portfolio view across multiple projects and programmes
- Lead the highest-risk and most complex programmes personally, rather than relying solely on Project/Programme Managers
- Challenge, reprioritise and, where necessary, stop delivery plans that aren’t robust enough
- Hold technical leads and Programme/Project Managers accountable for their delivery commitments
- Own portfolio-wide sequencing, prioritisation and resource conflicts
- Enforce robust change control across infrastructure, platform and database changes
- Validate technical estimates, assumptions and delivery timelines
- Ensure resilience, HA and failover requirements are properly tested before sign-off
- Drive evidence-based delivery reporting using planned vs actual performance, forecast variance and direction of travel
- Identify risks, dependencies and ownership gaps early — before they become escalations
- Influence upward and challenge senior/exec stakeholders where delivery decisions need to change
- Mentor and develop junior Project and Programme Managers
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What we’re looking for
Senior Delivery Leadership
- Head-of-level experience with a proven progression from project → programme → portfolio management
- Strong experience leading complex, multi-team infrastructure or technology delivery portfolios
- Excellent programme and project management capability, including critical paths and complex dependencies
Delivery Methodology
- Solid grounding in both Waterfall and Agile delivery
- Practical understanding of flow-based delivery and metrics, including cycle time, WIP and throughput
Programme Rescue & Stakeholder Management
- Evidence of preventing programmes from failing and, where programmes have gone off track, successfully turning them around
- Comfortable managing expectations and having difficult conversations at senior and executive level
- Able to challenge and influence upward, including CIO and executive stakeholders — rather than simply reporting status
Hands-on TechOps Delivery
- Genuine hands-on TechOps delivery experience across areas such as Data Centres, Networks, ITSM and ITIL
- Technically credible enough to challenge estimates, assumptions and delivery plans
- Willing and able to get into the detail rather than relying solely on Project/Programme Managers
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Portfolio Management
- Ability to build and maintain a portfolio view across multiple projects and programmes
- Strong experience owning high-level plans, dependencies, sequencing and resource conflicts
- Hands-on experience using JIRA and Confluence for governance, planning and reporting
Leadership & Mentoring
- Proven experience mentoring and developing junior Project and Programme Managers
- Strong leadership, influencing and organisational skills
Desirable experience
- Data centre migrations and infrastructure transformation
- Network and hardware refresh programmes
- Disaster recovery and infrastructure resilience
- High-availability / always-on environments
- Regulated environments, including audit trails and compliance evidence
- ITIL / ITSM environments
- Agile, product-led or flow-based delivery
- Trend-based delivery forecasting and portfolio reporting
This role is ideal for someone who combines strong technical credibility, portfolio-level thinking and genuine delivery authority.
You’ll be expected to understand what is really happening across the portfolio, challenge assumptions, identify emerging issues and intervene early, not simply produce status reports.
If you’re an experienced infrastructure delivery leader who has successfully rescued programmes, managed complex portfolios and influenced at executive level, this could be a great opportunity.
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