Design & Governance Manager

Company Description

We’re Together. For over 50 years, we’ve helped thousands of people, businesses and professionals unlock their property ambitions with our common-sense approach to mortgages and secured loans. We take the time to understand our customers and our door is always open, so we can often help when other lenders can’t or won’t. Based in Cheadle, Cheshire, our 900 colleagues help our customers throughout the UK, backed by the power of a £7.8 billion loan book.

As the Design Governance Manager, you will be the glue which ensures that design practices across projects and products align with organisational standards, brand guidelines, regulatory requirements, and strategic objectives. You will be a guardian of design quality, consistency, and compliance, often bridging creative, technical and business teams. Similar to a Project Management role, you will work hand in hand with our PMO team to manage projects and ensure that each team is aligned, working within governance standards, risk is correctly managed and quality standards are maintained.

This role is focused on data projects and in turn, you will be working very closely with our Data Teams.

• Manage and run effective architecture and design governing groups and their intended controls over changes across the organisation.
• Ensure that changes are robustly reviewed and aligned to our target operating model and target architecture.
• Own the architecture catalogue for the department – ensuring that the right teams and departments are ‘thinking ahead’ to plan for renewals, mandatory upgrades and exits in good time.

• Manage and maintain the Architecture catalogue; which will inform emerging priorities of the Technology and Change teams.
• Ensure the good governance of Design Groups – ensuring robust design interventions and controls across our Design Collective and Architecture Boards.
• Lead the governance of key Enterprise change delivery fora;
  Enterprise Interlock & Enterprise Design Authority.
• Establish and lead the Design Collective – ensuring this effectively promotes disciplined designs that balance business, data and technical considerations.
• Work with other key governance roles across PMO (Change) and the CIO function more broadly.
• Lead modernisation and improvement work streams that seek to place good design practice squarely in the middle of our change delivery.
• Develop and deploy a monthly performance dashboard to help demonstrate the value and performance of Architecture & Design.

ideal experience includes:

• This role might appeal to someone with previous PMO or Project Management experience within Data or wider Tech, but all backgrounds will be considered.
• Knowledge and experience of running governing forums, ideally in a Change, Tech or Transformation world.
• Ability to continually review and improve ways of working – particularly the effectiveness and control of governance.
• Experience of managing complex workloads that span different teams and disciplines.
• Experience of tracking and reporting performance – including the development and embedding of robust metrics that drive business performance and cost effectiveness.
• Able to act as an SME for Design – both within the department and more broadly with key stakeholders.
• Ability to own and maintain complex business artefacts that inform our departmental priorities – ideally as part of a strategic planning cycle.
• Excellent stakeholder management and ability to develop strong profile with Exec-level stakeholders.

If you feel you have some of the skills mentioned above, but not all, please do still apply and we would be happy to have a further discussion with you in regards to your suitability for the role.

Together embraces diversity and inclusion, and are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Not only do we welcome difference – we celebrate it, support it and really value our colleagues for who they are. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills.

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