Head of Portfolio

Job reference 341048

Head of Portfolio - Governance, Prioritisation and Portfolio Management

Competitive salary, plus £5,500 car allowance or £5,000 private healthcare, 18% annual bonus potential, 27.5 days annual leave plus bank holidays rising with service and a company pension scheme with highly competitive contribution rates

Permanent, Full time

Location:

Royal Mail, 185 Farringdon Road, London, EC1A 1AA
. Office based 4 days each week, one day hybrid.

As Head of Portfolio, you'll be responsible for owning the health, governance and visibility of a complex portfolio of programmes and initiatives, ensuring investment, priorities and delivery plans are aligned to business objectives

This is a unique opportunity to shape and lead a newly established portfolio function at the heart of Royal Mail's Customer & Revenue (Parcels) business.

As Head of Portfolio, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring our most important initiatives are prioritised, governed and delivered effectively, helping to translate strategy into action across a complex and fast-paced organisation.

Working closely with senior leaders across our key business functions including Customer Experience, Commercial and Operations, you will ensure the right initiatives receive the right focus at the right time. By driving alignment across the business, you will help maximise value, support strategic decision-making, and enable the successful delivery of key priorities that contribute to the long‑term success of the organisation.

What makes this opportunity particularly exciting is that you will be building the function rather than inheriting it. You will have the autonomy to design and establish the portfolio intake, prioritisation and governance framework from the ground up, creating the processes, standards and ways of working that will shape how strategic change is managed across the business for years to come.

With significant exposure to senior leadership, this role offers the opportunity to influence decision‑making at the highest levels, enhance governance and portfolio management capability, and bring greater visibility, transparency and control to a diverse portfolio of strategic initiatives. This is a role where your expertise, judgement and leadership will have a tangible and lasting impact across Royal Mail.

Acting as a trusted extension of the Director of Customer Service & Experience, you'll provide strategic oversight, challenge and insight that helps drive informed decision‑making at the highest levels of the organisation.

This is a highly visible role with exposure to senior leadership, Executive Committee and Board‑level forums, where your ability to bring clarity, structure and commercial judgement will directly influence business outcomes.

• Lead the portfolio intake and prioritisation process, ensuring new initiatives are thoroughly assessed, evidenced and aligned to strategic priorities.
• Design and continuously improve governance frameworks that support effective portfolio management, decision‑making and delivery.
• Create and maintain a clear, whole-year view of portfolio activity, ensuring stakeholders have visibility of key milestones, dependencies and priorities.
• Identify risks, clashes and interdependencies across multiple programmes, proactively escalating issues and recommending solutions.
• Partner with business units and senior stakeholders to support governance and robust business case development.
• Ensure benefits tracking and reporting provides confidence in the delivery of significant revenue growth and cost‑saving opportunities.
• Prepare high‑quality executive and Board‑level presentations, insight and briefings to support strategic decision‑making.
• Lead, coach and develop a small team of…