Principal Delivery Manager

CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference while always putting people first. We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years. Our UK Benefits - 35 days leave (including bank holidays). - Private medical insurance. - Enhanced parental and adoption leave. - Financial coaching + 5% pension match. - 40 hours of paid learning and development. View our full list of UK benefits. CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row. Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today. About the role and team: You lead delivery across a portfolio of engagements on one or more strategic accounts, taking accountability for outcomes, margin and client confidence at executive level. Working in partnership with Client Partners, you shape how we win, mobilise and grow work, set the commercial and AI-native delivery guardrails for your accounts, and build the next generation of delivery leaders. You're comfortable with ambiguity and pace, and you lead from the front on AI-native delivery in line with CreateFuture's AI-native SDLC. What you’ll be doing: - Take full accountability for measurable outcomes across all live engagements on your accounts, providing macro-level oversight, strategic alignment and the primary escalation path. Lead the most complex, high-stakes situations, including scope re-baselining and rescues of in-flight programmes. - Build executive relationships across one or more accounts and influence strategic and transformation direction. Frame trade-offs clearly, surface problems the client hasn't named yet and arrive with a point of view. Hold a firm line where needed, protecting outcomes, delivery risk and margin, not just the relationship. - Own large project P&L and account-level margin health, including utilisation, burn rate and forecasting, in close partnership with the Client Partner. Set the commercial framework and guardrails for your account, and advise on complex partnership models such as fixed-price, risk-and-reward and outcome-based delivery. - Partner with Client Partners to define multi-year account strategy and grow account value year on year. Play a pivotal role in shaping and winning large-scale pursuits, defining the delivery approach, pricing and team composition so new work delivers client satisfaction from day one. Delivery-led growth is something CreateFuture needs to do more consistently, and this role should lead by example. - Set a unified, AI-enabled delivery vision across your accounts and own enterprise-level delivery risk on complex, novel or ambiguous work. Continuously improve how AI is embedded across the SDLC in your client context, influence stakeholders to adopt better approaches, and make sure the gains in quality, speed and cost are measurable and compound over time. Help shape CreateFuture's commercial approach to AI-native delivery. - Line manage and develop delivery leaders, owning their career progression, coaching and performance. Build high-performance account cultures with succession pipelines so the next generation of leaders grows on your accounts. Own internal delivery capability objectives, support hiring and talent strategy, and represent CreateFuture externally through thought leadership. We'd love to talk to you if you have: - Proven experience working within a digital transformation consultancy, delivering complex transformation projects for external clients. - Experience operating at COO/CTO/CIO peer level, comfortable challenging senior stakeholders, providing strategic guidance, and being the person clients trust to tell them what they need to hear - Have led AI-enabled delivery in practice: embedding AI tooling across the SDLC, evidencing the gains it created, and keeping your own AI knowledge current through deliberate learning and experimentation. - Have line managed and developed delivery leaders, with examples of people you've grown into bigger roles. - Proven experience of commercial ownership, including managing Statements of Work (SOWs), change requests, budgets and project profitability. - Comfort with pace, ambiguity, and portfolio complexity. You will be managing a mix of short sharp engagements and long-term strategic accounts at the same time Nice To Have - - Financial Services, igaming or regulated industry experience (banking, fintech, payments, credit operations), understanding the regulatory landscape, real-time performance requirements, and multi-market complexity. - Experience of forming and executing organisational transformation programmes. - Experience scaling delivery teams across locations or markets as an account grows. - Hands-on experience with agentic AI tooling and a view on how it is changing delivery economics. - Formal delivery/agile certifications (e.g. SAFe, PRINCE2, Scrum). What we’ll offer you: We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed. We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look. Our hiring process We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process. It usually looks like this: - Call with our Talent Acquisition Team - Role specific capability interview Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens. Inclusion at CreateFuture We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work. If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help. We look forward to your application!