Method Optimisation Manager

Job Description

At abrdn, we empower our clients to plan, save, and invest for their futures. Through the expertise, insight, and innovation of our team, we help clients create more ways for their money to make an impact. Our focus is on delivering outcomes that go beyond financial returns by investing sustainably to build a better world.

The Delivery Optimisation team plays a vital role in ensuring that teams across abrdn operate efficiently and deliver value consistently. Our focus is on aligning team goals with strategic objectives and helping drive impactful results by applying agile practices and continuous improvement techniques.

About the Role

As a Delivery Optimisation Manager at abrdn, you will play a key role in optimising delivery practices across our teams. By aligning delivery methods with high-value outcomes, you’ll empower teams to prioritise effectively and realise results incrementally. You'll work with both teams and stakeholders to foster a culture of continuous improvement and ensure operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Outcome-Driven Facilitation: Guide teams to align their work with strategic goals and measurable outcomes. Facilitate prioritisation of high-impact work to maximise value delivery.

• Adaptation and Application of Methods: Use your knowledge of delivery methodologies to help teams adapt and apply methods that best suit their specific contexts.

• Stakeholder Collaboration: Facilitate alignment between teams and stakeholders, ensuring shared understanding of objectives. Translate strategic priorities into actionable plans.

• Team Coaching and Empowerment: Coach teams to self-manage, take ownership of their processes, and embrace continuous improvement.

• Performance Monitoring and Metrics: Help teams define and track performance metrics, enabling data-driven decision-making to optimise processes.

• Problem-Solving and Risk Management: Support teams in identifying and resolving delivery constraints, offering pragmatic solutions to complex challenges.

• Continuous Improvement Mindset: Lead teams in retrospectives, root cause analysis, and iterative improvements, ensuring a culture of ongoing refinement.

• Change Management: Facilitate the adoption of new practices, helping teams and leaders embrace change that drives better delivery outcomes.

About the Candidate

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

The ideal candidate will possess the following:

• Delivery Method Expertise: Extensive experience implementing and adapting frameworks and delivery methods in multi-team environments.

• Outcome Alignment: Proven ability to break down strategic objectives into prioritised backlogs with measurable outcomes.

• Stakeholder Collaboration: Experience partnering with senior stakeholders to define delivery objectives, manage dependencies, and resolve conflicts.

• Team Enablement: Skilled in coaching teams through challenges, fostering self-management, and encouraging continuous improvement.

• Performance Tracking and Optimisation: Hands-on experience setting up and interpreting key delivery metrics such as cycle time, lead time, throughput, and defect rates.

• Complex Delivery Scenarios: Experience in cross-functional teams with multiple interdependencies, managing integration between technical and business units.

• Continuous Improvement Leadership: Demonstrated success in facilitating iterative improvements and leading teams through change initiatives.

• Domain Knowledge: Experience delivering projects in a financial services domain or familiarity with compliance and regulatory frameworks would be beneficial but is not essential.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire. One of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our benefits

There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported.

When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around. This includes 40 days’ annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits – including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount portal. You can read more about our benefits here.

Our business

Enabling our clients to be better investors drives everything we do. Our business is structured around three distinct areas – our vectors of growth – focused on our clients’ changing needs. You can find out more about what we do here.

An inclusive way of working

Whatever way you like to work, if you have the talent and commitment to join our team, we’d like to hear from you.

At abrdn we’ve adopted a ‘blended working’ approach. This approach combines the benefits of face-to-face collaboration, coaching and connecting in our offices with the flexibility of working from home. It enables colleagues to find a balance that works for their roles, their teams, our clients and our business.

An inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives drive our actions, is at the core of who we are and what we do. If you need assistance with your application, or a reasonable adjustment to your interview arrangements – for example, because you are neurodivergent, or have a physical, sensory, cognitive, mental, visible or invisible disability – please let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment.  We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance.  We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.

If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.