Head of Enterprise Transformation Office

Job Type:  Permanent (Director) 

Location: This is a hybrid role with flexibility on the home office (Edinburgh, Birmingham or London) 

Flexible working: All roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process. You can read more about flexible working here. 

Closing Date: 19th November 2026 

Salary and benefits: £170,000 - £195,000 plus an indicative bonus range of 40% to 80%, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more. 

Who are we? 

We’re Standard Life, a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement savings and income. We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, and for more than 200 years, we’ve been helping our customers plan and prepare for their financial futures.

Life today is increasingly complicated, uncertain and unpredictable. People move through different careers, face unexpected moments and navigate important choices. We offer our colleagues flexibility, trust and benefits that work for whatever life brings. In return we expect curiosity, connection, accountability and high standards. We make room for what matters - so you can bring your best, every day.

This is your opportunity to shape how transformation is prioritised, governed and delivered across our organisation. In this pivotal enterprise-wide role, you’ll bring clarity to our change portfolio, strengthen governance and assurance, and ensure our investment, resources and change capability support our strategic ambitions.

Working closely with senior leaders, you’ll provide the insight and constructive challenge needed to turn priorities into delivery. From investment planning through to execution and benefits realisation, you’ll help ensure our transformation delivers meaningful, sustainable value.

The role 

• Own the enterprise-wide view of the change portfolio, bringing together strategic outcomes, milestones, dependencies, risks, resource constraints and overall delivery confidence.
• Lead clear, high-quality reporting for Executive and Board-level audiences, covering benefits, delivery risk, costs, resource capacity and emerging themes.
• Establish and continuously improve the frameworks, standards, controls, tools and management information that underpin effective portfolio and change management.
• Ensure our portfolio management tools and data provide consistent, transparent and evidence-based oversight of enterprise change.
• Lead assurance activity for priority programmes, particularly during mobilisation or periods of heightened delivery risk, and support effective remediation.
• Support the Annual Operating Plan and project approval lifecycle, ensuring benefits, dependencies, delivery constraints, non-financial outcomes and capacity requirements are clearly understood.
• Track strategic outcomes from initial ideas through to delivery and benefits realisation.
• Coordinate across portfolios to resolve material dependencies, resource conflicts, sequencing challenges and enterprise-wide delivery trade-offs.
• Lead forward-looking supply-and-demand planning for change capability, including skills, capacity, sourcing and strategic recruitment requirements.
• Strengthen accountability for portfolio decisions, ensuring risks, actions and decisions are escalated and resolved at the appropriate level.
• Build a strong enterprise change community that promotes consistent ways of working, shares insight and develops organisational capability.

What are we looking for? 

You will be an experienced enterprise transformation or portfolio leader who can operate confidently across a large, complex organisation. You will combine strategic thinking with strong delivery judgement and be comfortable influencing and constructively challenging senior stakeholders.

• A collaborative and credible leader who can balance pace, control and strategic ambition. 
• A Leader who is comfortable working with ambiguity and making pragmatic recommendations where information may be incomplete
• An enterprise-wide perspective, sound judgement and the confidence to challenge constructively. 
• Someone who can help create a culture of accountability, inclusion, collaboration and continuous improvement, ensuring transformation decisions are supported by robust evidence and a clear understanding of the wider organisational impact.
• A relevant degree or equivalent senior-level professional experience is required.
• A recognised portfolio, programme, project or change qualification, such as MoP, MSP, PRINCE2, APM or PMI, would be advantageous. 
• A relevant leadership, finance, risk or transformation qualification would also be beneficial.

We want to hire the whole version of you. 

We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you.  

 If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.  

We’re reviewing applications as they come in, so apply early to avoid missing out. 

Find out more about working at Standard Life 

• Guide for Candidates: standardlifeplc.pagetiger.com/guideforcandidates 
• Find or get answers from our colleagues: www.standardlifeplc.com/careers/talk-to-us