Head of Portfolio

Job reference

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.

About the role

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.

You’ll:

• 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 Portfolio Analysts, building capability and driving high standards of performance.
• Act as a critical friend to stakeholders, constructively challenging assumptions and strengthening business proposals before they progress.

About You

We're looking for a commercially minded portfolio leader with a proven track record of operating within large, complex organisations. You'll be comfortable influencing senior stakeholders, bringing structure to ambiguity and translating complex information into clear business outcomes.

You’ll bring:

• Extensive experience leading Portfolio Management, Portfolio Management Office, Governance or Business Change functions within a large matrix organisation.
• A track record of designing and implementing governance frameworks and prioritisation processes.
• Experience producing executive‑level reports, briefings and presentations for Board and senior leadership audiences.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to influence and challenge at board and senior leadership level.
• Strong commercial awareness with experience challenging and strengthening business cases and benefits assumptions.
• The ability to connect information across multiple workstreams and identify wider business impacts before they arise.
• Strong planning, organisation and prioritisation skills, with the ability to manage competing demands in a fast‑paced environment.
• Experience leading, coaching and developing analytical teams.
• A professional qualification, or equivalent experience, in Portfolio, Programme or Project Management, Business Change or Governance disciplines is desirable.

Extra Benefits

• Family friendly support - enhanced maternity pay, paternity leave, adoption leave and shared parental leave
• Supportive and generous company sick pay
• Funded Dental - As a manager you are eligible to a level of employer funded dental insurance*
• Health Assessment - As a manager you are eligible to an employer funded health assessment every 2 years*
• Benefits Account - You will have access to your personal benefits account on our My Bundle+' platform. There are more than 800 retail offers to help you save on things like groceries, days out, holidays and your household bills as well as employer provided and voluntary benefits to suit your lifestyle.
• Your Wellbeing - you and your family have 24/7 access to services and tools to help you get the most out of life. From your physical and mental health to financial and social support and advice. It's free, and it's for everyone.

*Available only to permanent employees

Next Steps

The next stage of the selection process will be an interview consisting of competency based and role specific questions.

Trust is the foundation of Royal Mail. We aim to be transparent about the qualities we seek and what a career with us entails, building trust from the start of your journey with us. Your interview is the first step, and we want you to shine. To help you prepare, we'll provide your interview questions in advance, so you can have your best examples ready. At Royal Mail Group, we value trust and our people.

Royal Mail Group is committed to inclusion and representing the diverse communities we serve. We welcome applications from all individuals. As a proud Gold signatory to the Armed Forces Covenant, we especially encourage applications from the Armed Forces community, including cadet instructors and spouses/partners.

We are committed to ensuring an inclusive recruitment process. If you require any adjustments to support you during the hiring process, please discuss these with your recruiter when contacted.

For more information on Royal Mail Group and our values please click here:

Closing Date: Wednesday 16th September 2026. Please note, this advert may close early if the appropriate number of applications has been reached.

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