Principal Project Manager

Please note: We are a hybrid working company and this role will require to attend Richmond (TW9) a few times a week and travel to customer sites when appropriate.

About Us

Launched in July 2020, Kerv is a next-generation ‘Customer-first, cloud-first’ provider, created to help customers achieve successful business outcomes in a new digital era.  We are undergoing an exciting period of transformation and growth following the merger of five highly successful organisations.

One of those organisations is Kerv Experience who live and breathe customer engagement. Every day, we create and implement award-winning, cloud omnichannel solutions to help our customers deliver industry-leading customer experience.

About the Role

As a result of continued growth, we are looking for a Principal Project Manager to lead the delivery of our largest, most complex and strategically important customer projects.

This is a senior, customer-facing role with end-to-end accountability from sales handover through delivery, go-live and transition into support. You will establish clear governance, maintain control of scope, plan, cost, risk and dependencies, and provide confident leadership to customers and internal delivery teams.

Alongside your own delivery portfolio, you will help raise project management standards across the team, coach colleagues and step into projects that need additional structure, recovery or senior stakeholder leadership.

Your part to Play

You will take ownership of complex Genesys Cloud and wider customer experience transformation projects, ensuring that delivery remains aligned to the agreed outcomes, Statement of Work and commercial position.

You will:

• Lead effective handover from sales into delivery, confirming that scope, assumptions, dependencies, commercials, customer obligations and acceptance criteria are understood and achievable.
• Establish the delivery approach, governance structure, reporting cadence and ways of working for each engagement.
• Lead customer kick-off, discovery and planning activities, translating requirements and solution inputs into a credible delivery plan.
• Coordinate internal teams, partners and customer stakeholders across multiple workstreams, managing dependencies and maintaining momentum.
• Own senior stakeholder communication and project governance, providing clear reporting on status, milestones, finances, risks, issues, decisions and actions.
• Maintain effective control of scope and change, ensuring that variations are documented, assessed, approved and reflected in the delivery plan and commercial position.
• Maintain accurate RAID, dependency and decision logs, escalating material concerns early and driving them through to resolution.
• Manage project budgets, resource forecasts, delivery dates, invoicing milestones and revenue forecasts within the relevant business systems.
• Plan and lead readiness, go-live, early-life support and formal handover into support or managed service operations.
• Take ownership of project recovery where delivery has moved off track, agreeing a clear reset plan with stakeholders and restoring effective governance and control.
• Identify delivery risks and improvement opportunities across the wider portfolio, sharing lessons learned and strengthening project delivery practices
• Coach and support Project Managers and Delivery Managers, providing practical guidance and quality assurance on plans, governance and stakeholder management.
• Support pre-sales and mobilisation activity where senior project leadership is needed to validate delivery assumptions, approach, estimates and risks.

All about You

You must:

• Have substantial experience leading complex, customer-facing technology or transformation projects with multiple stakeholders and workstreams.
• Demonstrate strong ownership of project outcomes, with the judgement and confidence to make decisions, challenge constructively and escalate when needed.
• Be experienced in establishing and operating proportionate project governance, including planning, reporting, RAID, change control, assurance and decision management.
• Have a strong commercial understanding, including management of budgets, forecasts, invoicing milestones, resource plans and contractual scope.
• Communicate clearly and credibly with delivery teams, senior customer stakeholders, partners and internal leadership.
• Have experience recovering or resetting projects that have encountered delivery, stakeholder or governance challenges.
• Be comfortable working across agile, waterfall and hybrid delivery approaches, selecting the right level of control for the engagement.
• Produce clear, accurate and decision-focused project documentation and reporting.
• Have experience of CCaaS, contact centre, cloud communications or a closely related technology environment; Genesys Cloud experience is highly desirable.
• Hold a recognised project management qualification, such as PRINCE2, APM, PMP or equivalent practical experience.

You should ideally also have:

• Experience delivering enterprise-scale Genesys Cloud, CCaaS or contact centre transformation programmes.
• Exposure to VoIP, integrations, data migration, workforce engagement, digital channels or managed service transition.
• Experience using ServiceNow, Runn, Jira or similar order, resource and delivery management platforms.
• Experience working with public-sector or regulated customers, including projects requiring security clearance.
• Experience coaching project professionals and improving delivery standards across a team.