Associate Director, Programme Management

London, United Kingdom

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world‑class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth.

WPP Media is WPP's AI‑driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation nected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.

The Associate Director of Programme Management will work closely with the Programme Leads and wider project team to deliver, maintain, and drive adoption in the business of a portfolio of solutions that provide our agencies with advantage through access to internal business data intelligence via application of best-in-class systems.

• With the Programme Leads and the Head of Global Business systems, develop a program of works for existing and new systems that supports WPP Media’s goals and best practices for maintenance of internal business data on our clients.
• Translate project requirements into tangible deliverables and solutions with a key focus on the cost and time to deliver.
• Own project planning required to deliver the programme objectives.
• Contribute to solution design in a thoughtful and user‑centric manner: how will end users engage and get best value from the products of the programme?
• Work directly with all project contributors – from external vendors, internal team members to all stakeholders – to allocate and prioritize this wider team’s workload to reach business goals and to incrementally deliver value.
• Continuously prioritize the backlog to ensure that the team is focusing on the most impactful areas first.
• Define goals, timelines, and potential risks.
• Maintain clear project plans and monitor progress against them.
• Testing to ensure that the product functions correctly and meets quality standards in the deployed state.
• Assist in implementation of the product, including onboarding of new users and migration of data. This may involve managing updates or new features gradually to minimize disruption and ensure a smooth transition.
• Change management. Programme management does not end with technical implementation. Delivery of the change and adoption throughout the business both at launch and also through an ongoing programme of works is the Director of Programme Management’s responsibility.
• Ensure that users are fully enabled and trained, ready to drive quality outcomes including designing supporting materials, user guides and online demonstrations.
• Gather feedback from users and stakeholders to identify areas for improvement for future deployments.
• Derive actionable insights from usage metrics that can be used to inform improvements in our products and processes in the service of driving product greater adoption in the practitioner user base.
• Assist in the development of reporting solutions to democratise the data captured in our applications.
• Contribute to the overall vision, product goals, roadmaps, and backlog for the products in your portfolio.

• Undertake a full audit of the projects in scope core to the program’s 2026 objectives and achieve full knowledge transfer making a tangible impact on product delivery.
• Establish meaningful relationships with business owners to support future change requests and features required as part of the transformation required in client teams for successful implantation of the product.
• Produce a plan with clear tasks required to deliver the core system out to the target launch markets and manage the delivery of those tasks to successful completion.
• Develop, in consultation with the product owner, a staged approach to deliver the core projects as a master program plan, complete with priorities and resource requirements.

• Experience of working within internal business teams, managing core in‑house project teams and external suppliers.
• Proven experience in a platform, product or…