Senior Project and Release Manager UK

Who We Are WPP Enterprise Solutions designs, builds, and operates the growth systems that competitive businesses rely on. In a world where Al is reshaping how companies drive growth, we lead clients in business transformation and marketing modernization, connecting strategy directly to execution. Our 12,000 experts in engineering and platforms, commerce, consulting, content transformation, CRM, and CX work within a unified global operating unit across 40+ markets. WPP Enterprise Solutions works alongside best-in-class partners including Adobe, AWS, Braze, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Shopify, as well as innovators in AI, to deliver growth solutions tailored to the needs of our clients’ businesses. VML, part of WPP, supports WPP Enterprise Solutions by helping brands activate transformation through creativity and experience. Senior Project Manager and Release Manager needed to join our Delivery Team on a contractual basis. The opportunity A Senior Project Manager, with a technical background, who has experience managing technical teams and releases across complex client environments. You encourage strong relationships with your team and have the ability the talk, at a technical level, with developers and senior technical team members (e.g., technical architects, solution architects etc). You follow best practices in development standards and coding reviews through having a good understanding of branching strategies, development standards and coding reviews through having a good understanding of branching strategies, development principals and CI/CD. Please bear in mind that this is a contractual role. What you’ll be doing Release and technical reporting regarding project/account technical deliverables, architecture and release pipeline Identify technical risks and issues & provide mitigation options to achieve resolution Knowledgeably communicate with stakeholders (internal/external) including chairing technical meetings as required Manage and co-ordinate Internal technical specialists Lead and inspire the team to achieve individual and team objectives Ensure the technical team(s) complete what is expected of them successfully and suggest improvements to processes as required. Provide support to Junior Technical Project Managers within your account or across WTC&T giving them regular constructive feedback to help with their development Define, plan, organise and manage the build of new infrastructure environments Co-ordinate high quality technical solutions, on time, via effective time management Keep up to date with emerging industry practices Effectively run complex projects using Agile or Waterfall methodologies. Oversee releases across pre-production and production environments, demonstrating an understanding of dependencies between client systems. Implement technical governance according to the client’s needs Build customer confidence by understanding their needs & delivering first class solutions Set and manage client expectations, addressing issues in a respectful and timely manner and ensuring the organisation maintains a positive image and provides a high-quality service Manage 3rd party product vendors, environments, and client technical resources What we want from you Project Management experience, and ecommerce experience ideally within a retail environment. Ability to read log files, draw conclusions and direct further technical investigation Working with eCommerce frameworks and hosting solutions Understanding of cloud/on prem. Infrastructure Familiarity with Azure and AWS DevOps Tooling Defining, managing and delivering to customer expectations within strict deadlines Full knowledge of the project lifecycle and experience of various project development methodologies (including Agile, Incremental and Waterfall) Comfortable with complex technical environments and legacy systems integration Managing 3rd parties Strong time manag