Ocado Retail
Portfolio Lead
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Portfolio Lead
Portfolio Lead
Contract type: Permanent Location: Hatfield (Hybrid working – 3 days in the office) Working hours per week: 40 hours Level: Lead Application Closing Date: Thursday 16th July 2026
About Us
Our mission is to deliver joy in every shop, through unbeatable choice, unrivalled service, and reassuringly good value. We’re also on a mission to empower our business with smart technology; we’ve recently launched our AI Academy, providing a tailored AI learning journey for every colleague.
We’re Ocado Retail, a market-leading joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S, and the world’s largest dedicated online supermarket (ocado.com). Not only is Ocado the only place to shop a full range of M&S food online, it’s also the home to the widest online supermarket range in the UK and champion of small, independent brands. We’re also the brains behind Zoom by Ocado, our same-day grocery delivery service.
About the Team and the Role
The Transformation team is responsible for planning, sequencing, and executing a portfolio of exciting transformation projects across the business. This role is critical in ensuring that, as a business, we are clear on the projects and programmes we are doing, and why we are doing them. This role will ensure:
- Alignment and consistent prioritisation across the business and transformation initiatives, delivering on ORL strategy.
- Embedding and running a flexible and agile approach to prioritisation, ensuring effective planning and clarity on organisational goals.
- Applying a consistent ROI framework to initiatives we choose to undertake.
- Close collaboration with a wide range of teams from Ocado Retail, Ocado Technology & Ocado Logistics, coordinating and driving alignment across functions.
Reporting to:
Head of Transformation
What You’ll Do
- Develop and maintain the rolling transformation roadmap—ensuring alignment and prioritisation reflects current business priorities.
- Identify interdependencies and manage risks and issues at a portfolio level, ensuring they are escalated and raised appropriately.
- Support the prioritisation process (LT), ensuring initiatives are aligned with business objectives.
- Understand initiatives happening across the business and how they deliver the ORL strategy.
- Lead the intake process (business cases) for ideas, applying consistent scoring methodologies to assess strategic fit, ROI, and risk before initiatives are approved for delivery.
- Value maximisation/realisation framework: track business benefits—working with finance and stakeholders to validate business cases.
- Partner with finance and business owners to ensure agreed outcomes are measured and achieved.
- Capacity and demand management: provide a macro-view of resource demand across the portfolio, identifying bottlenecks (e.g., tech, change, or PM resource) that may hinder progress.
- Build and maintain excellent relationships with senior leaders, project managers, and functional leads.
- Support the creation of materials such as steercos and prioritisation forums to focus on the value lens/ROI.
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Who You Are
Strategic Thinking: Proven experience in portfolio management or strategic planning within a high-growth or retail environment.
Stakeholder Management: Ability to build strong working relationships quickly and collaborate within a complex stakeholder environment, spanning multiple departments and specialties. Tailor your approach to influence colleagues who have different business priorities.
Financial & Commercial Acumen: Strong ability to understand business cases, ROI models, and financial re-forecasting.
Influencing & Negotiation: Capacity to manage competing priorities between departments and steer senior stakeholders towards a unified roadmap.
Analytical Mindset: Expertise in using data (e.g., FocusHQ) to create a "single source of truth" regarding portfolio health and driving strategic value.
Knowledge of Portfolio Frameworks: Deep expertise in frameworks like MoSCoW or WSJF, applying them pragmatically where necessary.
Communication: Ability to translate complex project data into a compelling, high-level strategic narrative for the C-suite.
Resilience: Comfort operating in a fast-paced environment where priorities adjust rapidly based on market conditions.
What’s in It for You?
By joining Ocado Retail, you’ll:
- Experience life at the world’s largest online retailer.
- Work alongside an amazing team dedicated to pushing boundaries in innovation and retail technologies.
- Advance your career within the ever-evolving landscape of e-commerce.
- Join our AI Academy, so you can develop essential smart technology skills for the future.
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Our benefits include:
Health & Wellbeing:
- Private medical insurance for you and your family (if applicable).
- Digital GP appointments.
- Market-leading family policies.
- Mental health support.
- Discounted gym memberships.
- Comprehensive dental insurance.
Spend & Save:
- Annual bonus scheme split between personal and business objectives.
- Recognition and reward platform.
- Up to 7% matched pension contributions.
- 15% Ocado discount.
- 20% M&S discount.
- Free breakfast every day in the office.
- Electric vehicle leasing scheme.
- Free shuttle bus from Hatfield station to the office.
Work-Life Balance:
- Hybrid working model.
- 26 days holiday plus 8 flexible bank holidays.
- Option to buy extra holiday.
- 2 weeks Work From Anywhere per year.
- Lifestyle break opportunities.
Our Hiring Process
We receive a high volume of applications, and we sincerely value the time and effort you put into yours. To ensure fairness and thoroughness, all candidates’ applications are reviewed internally. If you demonstrate a strong skill and experience match, we’ll invite you for discussion with a Talent Partner to detail the next steps.
Your Application and Use of AI:
Welcomed use of AI tools when preparing your application reflects how we integrate technology in our business. However, keep in mind your personal attributes: experiences, passions, and personality are what makes you stand out. Your answers should still be authentic and demonstrate why you’re the ideal candidate.
Equal Opportunities:
We are an equal opportunities employer. Please take part if you require this job description or any part of the recruitment process in a different format. Reach out to careers@ocadoretail.com for your support, whether that’s larger text variations, modified document formats, etc. If you need reasonable adjustments during interviews, mention this within your application.
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