Programme Lead

Programme Lead x3
Contract type: Permanent 
Full time: 34.5 hours, we are open to a conversation about how you work these hours
Location: Hybrid between home and our London, Shipley or Glasgow office (typically 2-4 days per year in office). We are open to applicants based anywhere in the UK.
Salary Range: £55,000 - £61,000. Please note that we typically offer at the start of the range, unless candidates demonstrate exceptional skills and experience.

Are you an experienced programme manager who excels at driving strategic delivery and shaping impactful work within complex environments? Do you bring expertise in agile delivery, whole‑systems change, and collaborative leadership?

We’re recruiting 3x Programme Leads to shape, deliver, and evolve strategic programmes that make a meaningful difference to people living with cancer.

About us

At Macmillan you'll find talented people working together to do whatever it takes to support people living with cancer. We're going all out to find even better ways to help even more people who need our support. Our values are at the heart of who we are and everything we do, inspiring our thinking and guiding our actions.

Our new organisational strategy sets out how we’ll fight even harder to make every pound raised count for even more. With your help, we’ll transform cancer care for good.

About the role

As a Programme Lead, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping and delivering a portfolio of internal and external strategic projects and programmes within our Community and System Partnerships division. As part of the Programme Implementation team, you’ll ensure our work is initiated, delivered, and exited brilliantly – enabling our programmes to be agile, responsive, and strategically aligned.

You’ll act as a key connector across the organisation, working closely with colleagues in many teams including Community & System Partnerships, Insight & Performance, and a wide variety of partner organisations. You’ll also help shape Macmillan as a learning organisation, ensuring insights, outcomes, and best practice are captured, shared, and used to influence future work.

This is a pivotal time to join us as we implement our new strategy, shaping new and existing initiatives. You’ll help develop our blueprint for future programme delivery and support the testing of new approaches that ultimately make a real impact on people living with cancer.

Key responsibilities:

• Manage the end-to-end delivery of a portfolio of strategic programmes that improve outcomes for people living with cancer.
• Lead and manage relationships, working collaboratively within a matrix environment.
• Ensure delivery against end‑to‑end plans, including managed exits, transitions, and product ownership where required.
• Provide strategic updates to internal and external stakeholders and hold regular reviews with programme leads.
• Facilitate shared learning across Macmillan, engaging with communities of practice to share best practice.
• Identify and manage risk, maintaining appropriate controls and updating risk registers.
• Contribute to the development of blueprints for legacy, learning, and future programme design.
• Support the development of resources, tools, and case studies, enabling thought leadership and organisational learning.
• Provide financial oversight of relevant projects and programmes.

About you

The successful candidate will demonstrate the following skills and experience:

• Expert knowledge of agile and waterfall programme delivery.
• Experience leading collaboratively in a matrix environment.
• Experience in whole‑systems transformation.
• Experience reviewing and integrating performance management frameworks.
• Excellent project and programme management skills.
• Experience managing relationships internally and externally.
• Understanding or experience of product ownership.
• Experience managing a portfolio of projects.

It would be great (but not essential) if you also have:

• Experience delivering programmes in the charity sector.
• Experience of whole‑systems change in health or social care.
• Experience contributing to or leading the development of a learning organisation.

In return, we offer a range of benefits including:

• 25 days holiday plus flexible bank holiday options, increasing by 1 day every year of service up to 30 days
• Pension matched up to 7.5%
• 120+ learning and development offers, with access to external professional qualifications
• Flexible working patterns, such as compressed hours, flexibility to work earlier or later around our core working hours of 10am-4pm
• Holiday buying and selling scheme, life insurance, free wills, retail discounts and much more

Recruitment process

Application deadline: 23:59 on Sunday 15th February
Interview process: There will be a two-stage interview process using MS Teams. There will be a short presentation task to prepare as part of the first stage interview.
First stage interview dates: 25th and 26th February
Second stage interview date: 4th March

We may close applications early depending on application volume, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

To ensure fairness and consistency to select the best candidate for this role, all our applications are anonymised up until an interview has been confirmed.

So we can support you to be at your best during the application or interview process, please contact Macmillan TA Team TATeam@macmillan.org.uk for advice and reasonable adjustments. 

We welcome applications from everyone who meet the criteria and strongly encourage individuals to apply who have a disability, impairment or health condition or individuals who identify as Black, Asian or from another minority ethnic background, as these groups are currently under-represented at Macmillan. Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy here along with our internal employee representation body, ‘Our Voice’ and 8 Employee Network groups help us promote fairness and belonging, becoming an engaged and inclusive organisation for all our people.