Portfolio Lead

Job DescriptionThe Portfolio Lead is accountable for delivery performance across a sub-domain of 4-6 pods (Engineering, Quality, Product). They lead the flow of value from idea to production, ensuring pods deliver with pace, predictability and understanding to outcomes. They combine hands-on delivery leadership with AI-augmented ways of working and data-driven decision-making. They do not prescribe a single framework - instead they adapt approaches that best serve each pod's context. They partner with Engineering and Product leadership to reduce waste, improve throughput and help pods achieve Autonomy, Accountability and Agreement to value outcomes. What you will do Pod Performance & Accountability You are responsible for pod delivery performance across the sub-domain. You will lead and communicate delivery health, risks and performance to leadership Ensure pods operate as, self-organising units delivering value outcomes Support pod leads with coaching, facilitation and conflict resolution Ensure cross-pod agreement on priorities, dependencies and shared goals Facilitate communication and collaboration between pods to promote knowledge sharing Problem Solving You will be an expert; deploy root cause analysis, systems thinking and structured techniques to analyse and guide out resolutions. Be an escalation point for cross-pod blockers and systemic impediments Identify patterns across pods that indicate deeper organisational or process issues AI-Augmented Delivery Champion AI agent adoption across pods - including coding agents, test generation, story creation, board health and deployment automation Identify opportunities where AI can reduce toil, accelerate delivery or improve decision-making Apply AI to improve delivery effectiveness, including workflow insights, risk prediction, and automation of reporting Track and demonstrate the impact of AI on delivery performance Flow & Efficiency Monitor and improve delivery flow (lead time, cycle time, WIP, throughput) using Kanban and lean principles Ensure WIP limits are respected and surface ageing items through Board Walks Identify bottlenecks, ageing work and sources of delay across pods. Improve through regular assessment and experimentation. Support teams in breaking down work into deliverable, value-driven increments Agile Ways of Working Support and evolve the agile operating model for a pod-based environment focused on pace, not ceremony. Adapt delivery approaches (Kanban, flow-based, lean) appropriate to each pod's needs Ensure consistency of practice across pods without being prescriptive Promote outcome-driven delivery vs output-driven activity Guide teams to operate with autonomy and accountability Metrics & Reporting Define and maintain delivery metrics: cycle time, flow efficiency, lead time of initiative, PDLC compression, dependency reduction, rework rate, team satisfaction, and AI effectiveness Build dashboards (cumulative flow diagrams, throughput charts, WIP ageing) that provide leadership visibility and lead informed decision-making Analyse performance data to identify trends, patterns and areas for improvement Use data to facilitate conversations and coach pods — not just track output Stakeholder Management Partner with Engineering and Product leadership at sub-domain level Represent delivery health and risks in leadership forums Build trusted relationships that allow fast decision-making Communicate delivery performance to both technical and non-technical audiences Commercial Awareness Understand the commercial context of the sub-domain Connect delivery decisions to revenue, cost, and customer impact Support prioritisation trade-offs with a business lens Capacity Planning Forecast capacity across pods based on team composition, skills mix and upcoming demand Identify resourcing gaps and support hiring/allocation decisions Balance workload across pods to prevent burnout and underutilisation Support realistic planning by ensuring pods have clear understanding of available capacity Risk & Dependency Management Manage risks through regular assessment and execution of controls Ensure cross-pod dependencies are visible, tracked and managed Track dependency cost (time blocked, items affected) and lead mitigations such as contract-first development and feature flags Support issue escalations, ensuring intervention by the dependency escalation protocol Coach & Capability Development Provide hands-on coaching at pod level Build capability in workflow management, flow thinking, estimation, planning, and data-led decision-making Support teams in understanding and improving their own performance Strengthen a culture of continuous improvement and learning Outcome & Value Focus Align delivery to always ensure outcomes and value. Help teams understand the why behind their work and how their outputs contribute to value Challenge work that does not link to outcomes Support measurement of delivery against OKRs and value indicators Centre of Excellence (CoE) Contribution Be an active contributor to the CoE Share best practices, delivery insights and improvement opportunities from pods Support adoption of standards, playbooks and tools Help evolve delivery practices based on experience