Southern Water
Programme Capability Lead
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Closing Date 2026-07-24
Job Title: Programme Capability Lead – Smart Metering
Location: Worthing, West Sussex (Hybrid)
Contract Type: Permanent
Hours: 37, Monday to Friday
Salary: circa £70,000 + car allowance (depending on skills and experience)
About the Role
As Smart Metering Programme Manager, you will be accountable for leading the successful delivery of Southern Water’s smart metering installation programme through our strategic partner, HWI. This is a critical senior leadership role within the Smart Metering programme, responsible for ensuring that large-scale installation activity is delivered safely, efficiently, and to a high standard, while being fully aligned to Southern Water’s operational, customer, and data readiness.
What You Will Be Responsible For
- Lead the delivery of the HWI smart metering installation programme, ensuring performance against agreed targets for volume, quality, customer experience, and cost.
- Maintain an integrated end-to-end view of programme delivery, ensuring installation activity is aligned to Southern Water readiness across systems, data, operations, and customer channels.
- Act as the senior interface with HWI, establishing strong governance and holding the partner to account for delivery performance, continuous improvement, and contractual outcomes.
- Own and maintain the integrated programme plan, including milestones, interdependencies, and critical path.
- Manage programme RAID (risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies), ensuring proactive mitigation and clear ownership.
- Provide clear, insight-led reporting to senior leadership, highlighting delivery confidence, risks, issues, and required decisions or interventions.
What You’ll Bring to the Role
- 5-10 years of experience delivering large scale, complex, multi-year change programmes.
- Experience of managing the deployment of assets/ infrastructure, preferably a smart metering programme in utilities.
- Delivery or operational experience of managing the build or transformation of business capabilities (systems, people, process, and data) to deliver measurable customer outcomes.
- Expertise in managing a team and set of stakeholders from across multiple internal departments and 3rd parties.
- Strong leadership skills and demonstrable experience of establishing and maturing teams.
- Strong communication and influencing skills, with the ability to engage at different levels from C-suite down.
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About Southern Water
Southern Water is at the forefront of transforming Britain’s water industry, investing significantly to enhance resilience, sustainability, and service excellence. With £7.8bn planned investment for 2025-30, this is an unparalleled opportunity to join a business committed to delivering a generational shift in the way water services are managed. You will be joining at a time of significant change, working alongside a highly skilled leadership team with a clear vision for the future.
We offer an environment where senior professionals can make a meaningful impact, influence major strategic decisions, and drive long-term value creation.
"At Southern Water, we believe diverse perspectives drive innovation. If you’re passionate about making a positive impact and think you can bring value to our team, we’d love to hear from you—even if you don’t tick every box. Your unique skills and experiences could be exactly what we need."
If this role isn’t quite what you’re looking for but are keen to be contacted about opportunities at Southern Water, you can register your details here: [Introduce Yourself](myworkdaysite.com- Introduce Yourself)
Our Commitment to Diversity
We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic. If you need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
Additional Information
In line with Southern Water’s security requirements, successful candidates will be required to provide evidence of their identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record check (DBS), and verification of their employment and/or education history for the past three years. Appointment to this role is subject to the successful completion of all preemployment checks, including security vetting. Please note that if a candidate does not meet the required security standards or fails to pass the vetting process, Southern Water reserves the right to withdraw the offer of employment. Some positions may also require higher levels of security vetting, which may involve providing additional documentation.
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Our Purpose
Our purpose is big. Our impact is huge. And we know that every single one of us has the power, through our actions, to positively change society and the environment for good. It’s why careers with us have real meaning. Because, if you’re driven and ambitious, we can offer you huge opportunities for personal growth, professional development, and constant innovation. Forever evolving. Forever focused on doing the right thing, we empower and encourage everyone to play to their strengths and to help us shape a fair and positive future for all. We believe in Water for Life. If you do too, Dive Right In.
Our Customers
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support – because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That’s why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve.
Joining the Southern Water family means you’ll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position.
Does this opportunity excite you but you’re not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that ‘normal’ office hours aren’t possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’ll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?
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