Programme Management Office (PMO) Lead

OUR MISSION

To become the car-changing destination of choice. By combining technology, media and deep automotive expertise, we’ve turned how people buy, sell, advertise and lease cars on its head. What started as a simple reviews site is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe. Last year alone we grew over 50% with nearly £3bn worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8bn of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.

In 2024 we went big and acquired Autovia - creators of AutoExpress and Evo magazines -doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with almost 10m subscribers and over 1.1 billion annual views, while we sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350 million.

And we’re a long way from done!

CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT & TRANSFORMATION @ CARWOW

Carwow’s growth story is built on bold strategic moves: organic scale, partnerships, and acquisitions like Autovia. Delivering moves of that size takes serious programme discipline. That means clear governance, a real plan, owned risks, and someone who pushes cross-functional teams to an outcome rather than just tracking them.

That’s the job of the PMO. It’s a small, senior, high-leverage team that owns how Carwow’s most important cross-functional and corporate-development programmes actually get delivered, including our most demanding work: post-merger integrations and business separations.

This is hands-on leadership with direct line-of-sight to the most consequential decisions being made at Carwow.

YOUR MISSION

As PMO Lead, you own how Carwow’s most important programmes get delivered. You build and run the programme-management capability, covering the governance, planning, reporting and delivery rigour, and you personally lead the highest-stakes programmes from start to finish, including post-merger integration and business separation work.

You bring order to complexity, make the plan real, hold the organisation to it, and give senior leadership a clear, honest view of what’s on track, what’s at risk, and what decisions are needed.

You set the operating rhythm, chair the rooms, and keep dozens of moving parts across technology, data, finance, people and commercial all pointing in the same direction.

Success looks like: priority programmes delivered to plan; governance that is trusted rather than tolerated; risks surfaced early and owned; and a leadership team that can rely on a single, credible source of truth on delivery.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Build and run the PMO:

  • Governance, standards & tooling: Establish and own the programme-management operating model. That covers integrated planning, risk / assumption / issue / dependency (RAID) management, change control, a standardised reporting cadence and a clear set of KPIs, and getting all of it adopted across teams.

  • Portfolio oversight: Own the cross-programme view of strategic and corporate development initiatives: priorities, dependencies, critical path and resourcing conflicts. Surface what’s at risk early and drive it to resolution.

• Lead delivery of the highest-stakes programmes:

  • Hands-on programme leadership: Personally lead the most complex, high-visibility programmes, including post-merger integration and business separations, from planning through cutover / go-live, stabilisation and close.

  • Run the governance forums: Set agendas, drive pre-reads, chair working groups and steering committees, support executive steering, and track every decision and action to closure.

• Drive outcomes across the business:

  • Cross-functional leadership: Coordinate workstream leads across Product, Data, Finance, People, Marketing, Commercial and Technology, alongside external advisers, influencing without formal authority to keep delivery moving and decisions unblocked.

  • Risk, change & escalation: Manage risk, change and escalation crisply, so the right matters reach the right forum quickly and nothing material is missed.

  • Executive reporting: Give senior leadership and the Board a clear, honest read on status, risk and the decisions required, all from standardised templates and a single source of truth.

KEY REQUIREMENTS

• Extensive programme and PMO leadership experience, building and running governance, integrated planning, critical-path management, change control and RAID at scale.

• Comfortable with ambiguity, rapid change and shifting priorities in a fast-paced environment.

• Exposure to M&A activity, such as integration, business separations / carve-outs, or other post-deal work.

• Strong commercial judgement and the credibility to operate with senior stakeholders and executives in the room.

• Proven cross-functional leadership across technology, data, finance, people and commercial teams, with the ability to influence without formal authority.

• Excellent communication, with the ability to make complex programmes clear to a Board or executive audience.

• High level of ownership; calm, decisive and highly organised under pressure, and relentless about driving issues to closure.

• Discretion and integrity. Comfortable handling highly confidential M&A, financial, strategic and personnel-related information.

BONUS POINTS

• Extensive, hands-on experience delivering complex post-transaction programmes (M&A integration or carve-outs), owning them through to close rather than just supporting or observing.

• Programme / PMO leadership in tech, marketplace, classifieds, automotive or e-commerce businesses.

• Experience standing up a PMO capability from scratch and embedding it across an organisation.

• Experience of cross-border or multi-entity programmes, including across European jurisdictions.

• Recognised programme / project credentials (e.g. MSP, PRINCE2, PMP) are useful, though not essential.

• Genuine fluency with agentic AI tools and a clear point of view on how they can accelerate planning, reporting and analysis. You actually build with them, not just talk about them.

WHY THIS MIGHT NOT BE FOR YOU

This is a permanent role, but it’s anything but steady-state. You’ll be standing up rigour where it doesn’t yet exist, and leading programmes where the stakes and the visibility are high. Priorities shift with the corporate agenda, and you’ll spend as much time chasing closure and unblocking decisions as you do designing the plan. If you want a narrow, single-programme remit, or a process-light environment where governance is optional, this probably isn’t it. If you want to own how Carwow delivers its most important programmes, this is it.

INTERVIEW PROCESS

• Introductory call with our Talent team

• Interview with the hiring manager (Corporate Development / CEO Office)

• Case study and programme-governance exercise

• Values interview

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

• Competitive comp package

• 28 days' holiday plus bank holidays, increasing to 35 with length of service, plus extras for house moves, weddings and more!

• Employee-friendly share options

• Pension scheme via Royal London - up to 5% company contribution

• Vitality private healthcare insurance

• Life Assurance - 4x annual salary

• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner

• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave including up to 20 weeks' full pay maternity and shared parental leave, and 8 weeks' full partner pay, as well as fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies

• Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees for little ones

• 'Work from abroad for a month' annual scheme

• Generous learning and development budget

• £500 home office budget

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.