Innovation Portfolio Manager

Overview

In this role you will coordinate the Science & Technology function to align innovation, strategy, roadmapping and knowledge management. You will maintain the operating rhythm, governance and reporting, ensuring cross-functional alignment with Engineering, Product, Sales and leadership. You will drive selected areas from concept to business-as-usual and help turn ideas into deliverable outcomes. You will shape strategic initiatives, including AI-related activity, and foster knowledge sharing and transparency across the function. This is a hands-on, collaborative role that connects people, processes and priorities to enable scalable, future-ready capability.

Pay / Benefits

• on-site gym
• dedicated cycle storage
• sustainability-certified sites (Woking)
• proximity to transport links
• ample parking
• romsey countryside setting

Responsibilities

• Act as central coordination point for the S&T function ensuring coherence across innovation, road mapping, strategy and knowledge management
• Establish and maintain operating rhythm including governance, planning cycles, reviews, reporting, action tracking and stakeholder engagement
• Own selected parts of the function and drive them from concept through implementation to business-as-usual
• Coordinate interfaces between S&T and Engineering, Product, Sales, Accounts, Partner Services, Operations and leadership to ensure alignment
• Support management of innovation activities including tracking ideas, coordinating gate reviews, maintaining portfolio visibility and pull-through into deliverables
• Maintain programme-level view of priorities, risks, issues, dependencies, resource demand and delivery progress
• Develop dashboards and management information to support decision-making and performance tracking across S&T
• Coordinate knowledge management activities including flow and distribution of insight from problem books, IP, Communities of Interest, roadshows, etc.
• Support the creation and maintenance of integrated roadmaps covering future skills, tooling, technology direction and capability readiness
• Shape and coordinate strategic initiatives including AI activity, communications planning, academic engagement and thought leadership
• Build trusted working relationships with senior stakeholders and contributors to ensure actions are understood and followed
• Ensure artefacts, plans, trackers and outputs are structured and version controlled
• Provide timely reporting including KPIs, risks, issues and intervention recommendations
• Identify opportunities to improve S&T workflows, including automation and AI-enabled analysis and Power BI dashboards
• Uphold company policies, governance, and delivery discipline while remaining pragmatic and outcome-focused

Key requirements

• Strong programme or senior project management experience in complex, cross-functional environments
• Experience in science/technology/innovation/engineering delivery settings with multiple workstreams
• Excellent organisational skills with high attention to detail
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills across disciplines and levels
• Demonstrable ability to turn ambiguity into structure through plans, governance, reporting and prioritisation
• Strong analytical capability to interpret information and support evidence-based decisions
• Experience creating dashboards/reports using Power BI (desirable)
• Familiarity with AI tools or AI-enabled workflows (beneficial)
• Good understanding of innovation processes and how ideas translate to value
• Comfortable working across strategy, planning, knowledge sharing and delivery support
• Proactive, self-starting and adaptable; able to escalate when needed and drive actions to completion
• Project/programme/portfolio management qualifications desirable (e.g., APM, MSP, Prince2, PMI)

• Stakeholder management
• Communication
• Attention to detail
• Power BI
• AI-enabled workflows
• Dashboard/report development

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