Programme Support Officer - #138318

Our client is looking for a Programme Support Officer to provide proactive and structured support to the Programme Manager in delivering a complex, cross-institutional programme focused on process improvement and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The role supports the coordination and delivery of change across both academic and professional services functions and requires a strong understanding of transformation in the HE sector, with particular sensitivity to institutional culture and student-facing impacts.

Roles & responsibilities:

• Provides hands-on support to the Programme Manager across all workstreams, including planning, scheduling, dependency tracking, and status reporting, ensuring alignment with programme objectives and timelines.
• Builds strong working relationships across diverse stakeholder groups - including academic leaders, professional services teams, and student representatives - to support programme delivery and stakeholder buy-in. Supports and facilitates workshops on process improvement, automation readiness, and change adoption.
• Ensures programme documentation and decisions align with institutional governance frameworks, transformation-specific standards, and RPA delivery controls. Maintains audit trails and supports risk and issue management with particular focus on automation governance, data compliance, and academic operations.
• Prepares clear, tailored reports and dashboards on programme progress, impact, and risk, ensuring accessibility for different audiences (e.g., programme boards, working groups, academic committees). Synthesises technical, process, and change information into accessible updates.
• Supports coordination of pipeline development for RPA opportunities, tracking process improvement initiatives, and aligning delivery with agreed value measures (e.g., FTE release, student experience gains). Ensures project documentation reflects both process and automation perspectives.
• Supports the Programme Manager in monitoring budgets, tracking resource usage, and ensuring that investment aligns with transformation outcomes, including cost-saving or efficiency targets.
• Works with change leads and business areas to plan and support adoption activities, ensuring departments are equipped to embed process and automation-related changes. May lead small-scale change initiatives or act as the first point of contact for impacted teams.

Person specification:

The candidate will have:

• Experience working in or supporting complex transformation programmes in a Higher Education or similarly complex, stakeholder-rich environment.
• Strong understanding of process improvement methodologies (e.g. Lean, service design) and interest in automation/RPA as a transformation lever.
• Ability to translate technical or process-driven content into accessible updates for a range of audiences, including senior academics and operational leads.
• Strong organisational, communication, and facilitation skills, with the ability to coordinate cross-functional workstreams.
• A proactive, self-managing approach, comfortable working across strategic, operational, and technical layers.
• Confidence navigating institutional governance and academic sensitivities, especially in programmes affecting student services or administrative systems.
• Experienced in M365 inc Teams & Sharepoint, as well as PM tools such as Project & Jira.

Please note, experience working within a Higher Education setting, ideally University, is imperiative to be considered for this role.

If you meet the above criteria, please apply at your earliest opportunity to avoid missing the opportunity!