Head of Projects

Role Purpose

The head of Projects is a senior PS leader responsible for the quality, consistency, and commercial performance of project delivery across Keyloop's global Professional Services organisation. This role owns the PM capability, the delivery governance framework, and the portfolio health infrastructure that gives Keyloop and its customers confidence that every project will be delivered to time, scope, and outcome.

This is both a leadership and an operational excellence role. The Head of Projects sets the standard for how Keyloop manages projects - from methodology and tooling through to PM capability and career development - and is accountable for driving that standard consistently across all regions and domains. They work in close partnership with Regional Delivery Managers, Domain Leads, and PS Ops to ensure the project engine runs with discipline, data, and pace

Key Responsibilities

1. Portfolio Health & Governance

• Own the health of Keyloop's global PS project portfolio - maintaining real-time visibility of status, risk, and commercial performance across all active engagements.
• Implement and operate a Project Health model with RAG status tracking, early warning indicators, and tiered intervention protocols: direct PMO intervention for critical projects, regional-led recovery with PMO oversight for at-risk projects, and enhanced monitoring for projects showing early warning signs.
• Own the stage-gate intervention process - with authority to intervene when quality or commercial criteria are not met at key project milestones.
• Lead root cause analysis on project failures and overruns; translate findings into systemic improvements to methodology, tooling, and PM behaviour.
• Manage the escalation and exception process for scope disputes, commercial issues, and delivery roadblocks - with a 24-hour triage commitment for issues requiring senior intervention.

2. Delivery Methodology & Standards - SureStart

• Own and continuously evolve Keyloop's PS project delivery methodology, anchored in Keyloop SureStart - the productised project management framework that defines service levels, PM engagement models, and delivery standards across all implementation types.
• Ensure SureStart tiers (Project Coordination, Project Assisted, Project Managed, and Programme Managed) are clearly defined, consistently applied, and matched to the right engagement type and customer complexity at point of sale.
• Work with the Services Products team to keep SureStart commercially current: pricing, scope definitions, and SOW language aligned to what PS can deliver profitably and repeatably.
• Define and maintain the standard project artefact library: SOW templates, project plans, RAID logs, change request processes, cutover plans, and go-live readiness checklists - version-controlled and mandated for use across all regions.
• Build and enforce quality gate standards at key project milestones: requirements sign-off, UAT completion, go-live readiness, and post-go-live outcome validation.
• Lead methodology adoption across all PS teams - ensuring Keyloop Traction and SureStart delivery standards are embedded in every project regardless of region or domain.

3. Portfolio Analytics & Executive Reporting

• Deliver real-time portfolio dashboards providing visibility of project health, revenue at risk, utilisation, margin performance, and time to value across all regions.
• Produce weekly executive briefings covering critical interventions, resource constraints, forecast risk, and commercial impact.
• Develop predictive models linking project attributes - size, complexity, domain, PM experience - to delivery outcomes; use these to enable data-driven risk mitigation at project inception.
• Publish quarterly portfolio insight reports: pattern analysis, systemic improvement recommendations, and trend data to inform PS strategy.
• Automate reporting infrastructure to eliminate manual status compilation - giving PMs and regional leaders real-time self-service access to the data they need.

4. PM Capability & Community

• Define and own the PM competency framework for Keyloop PS - covering role profiles, skill requirements, and progression pathways from Associate PM through to Senior Programme Manager.
• Lead PM performance calibration in partnership with Regional Delivery Managers - identifying high-potential talent, capability gaps, and development priorities across the global PM community.
• Design and deliver a PM training and certification programme covering commercial acumen, stakeholder management, methodology mastery, and tooling proficiency.
• Build and run a PM community of practice: cross-regional peer learning, best practice sharing, lessons learned, and methodology evolution.
• Standardise PM onboarding to achieve productivity benchmarks within 60 days; build a searchable knowledge base of project case studies, delivery guides, and solution accelerators.
• Partner with the PS Academy to define a structured development framework that supports hiring for potential and building PM capability from within.

5. Commercial Performance

• Take accountability for the commercial performance of the PM function: PM team revenue, delivery margin, and utilisation performance against plan.
• Ensure projects are delivered within sold scope and margin - driving change control discipline and overrun management across all PMs and regions.
• Monitor and manage backlog health - volume, value, age, and scheduling - ensuring PS capacity is deployed against the right priorities at the right time.
• Track and improve time to start and time to value metrics across the project portfolio; identify and remove the systemic blockers that slow mobilisation and delivery.
• Provide accurate revenue and margin forecasting for the PM function; flag risks and opportunities with enough lead time to act.

6. Workforce Strategy & Global Delivery Centres

• Lead the PM workforce strategy in partnership with PS Ops and HR - aligning PM headcount, skills mix, and geographic distribution to current and future delivery demand.
• Drive the migration of appropriate PM activity into Regional Delivery Centres (RDCs) and Global Delivery Centres (GDCs), building centre-based PM capability as a scalable, cost-effective component of the global delivery model.
• Develop talent pipelines within GDCs: structured onboarding, progression pathways, and integration into Keyloop delivery culture and standards.
• Engage co-delivery partners where appropriate to provide elastic PM capacity, maintaining Keyloop quality standards across partner-led project management.

7. AI, Automation & Continuous Improvement

• Lead the automation of PMO and PM overhead - targeting elimination of manual reporting, status compilation, and administrative tasks through tooling, AI, and workflow automation, freeing PMs to focus on customers and delivery outcomes.
• Drive the adoption of AI to augment the PM role: AI-assisted project risk scoring, automated RAG status updates, intelligent scheduling, effort estimation validation, and early warning triggers - making PMs more effective, not replacing the judgement that matters.
• Use AI and automation to accelerate time to value for customers: reduce mobilisation time, automate routine project communications, digitise handover and go-live processes, and cut the administrative burden that slows projects down.
• Deploy AI-assisted tools for resource matching and capacity forecasting; measure and report the impact on forecast accuracy, utilisation, and delivery outcomes.
• Define and track an AI adoption metric for the PM function - what proportion of PM overhead has been automated, and what is the measurable impact on TTV and customer satisfaction.
• Champion a continuous improvement culture: structured retrospectives, systematic lessons learned, and rapid iteration on what isn't working.

Skills, Knowledge & Experience

Essential

• Senior leadership experience in project management and PMO within a SaaS or enterprise software environment.
• Proven ability to build and operate governance frameworks at scale: methodology, tooling, quality gates, and portfolio health management.
• Familiarity with productised PS frameworks and tiered PM service models (e.g. Keyloop SureStart or equivalent) - able to own the methodology commercially as well as operationally.
• Experience driving AI adoption and automation within a PM or PMO function to augment team effectiveness and improve TTV.
• Commercial acumen: understands how PM decisions drive margin, utilisation, revenue recognition, and customer lifetime value.
• Strong data and analytics capability: designs reporting infrastructure, builds predictive models, and leads with quantified insight.
• Demonstrated success building PM capability - competency frameworks, training programmes, career pathways, and community of practice.
• Executive presence: able to present portfolio risk and recommendations to C-suite with clarity and confidence.

Desirable

• Knowledge of the automotive dealer or vehicle retail industry.
• Experience building PM capability within GDC or offshore delivery environments.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML tools applied to project risk scoring, effort estimation, or delivery automation.

Qualifications

Education - Bachelor's degree in Business, Technology, or equivalent. Relevant postgraduate qualification desirable.

Certifications - PRINCE2 Practitioner or PMP/PMI required. MSP, SAFe, or equivalent desirable.

Experience - 10+ years in project management and PMO leadership roles within a SaaS or enterprise software environment.

What 'Great' Looks Like in This Role

• Runs the PM function with the same commercial rigour as a P&L - knows the numbers, owns the outcomes.
• The portfolio has no surprises: risks are visible early, interventions happen before projects fail, and customers never experience a problem that Keyloop didn't see coming.
• PMs across all regions operate to a consistent standard - because the methodology, tooling, and training make that the path of least resistance.
• Reporting is automated, trusted, and used - not compiled manually and questioned.
• The PM community is genuinely engaged: learning, sharing, and raising the bar together.
• Every project closes with a customer who is live, adopting, and successful on the Keyloop Fusion platform.