Lead Implementation Manager

We are looking for a Lead Implementation Manager to own the end-to-end technical delivery of our software to external clients — from kick-off through to live, adopted, and referenceable. You will be the single point of accountability for each implementation: orchestrating the customer, our product and engineering teams, and third parties so that complex software lands cleanly, on time, and to the value the client signed up for. Key Responsibilities Own delivery of the implementation lifecycle for a portfolio of client accounts, from deployment, configuration, and testing through to training, adoption, and handover to ongoing support. Build and maintain robust delivery plans, RAID logs, and governance rhythms, proactively managing scope, timelines, dependencies, and risk in line with client regulatory and compliance frameworks. Use product analytics and business analysis to drive implementations to a clear "done" state, where the client is live, adopting the product, and realising intended outcomes. Act as the trusted senior point of contact for client stakeholders, from operational users through to executive sponsors. Manage expectations and navigate competing priorities, holding firm but constructive lines on scope and commercial boundaries. Translate fluidly between business intent and technical reality, ensuring clear communication between clients and internal teams. Work closely with product and engineering teams, validating releases, triaging issues, and representing customer technical needs with precision. Read and reason about configurations, data structures, integration patterns, and API behaviour well enough to scope work accurately and challenge estimates. Feed structured, prioritised insight back into the product roadmap based on real implementation experience. Produce clear, concise status and risk reporting for executive and leadership audiences, with a defensible view on RAG status, risk, and forecast. Surface escalations early, bringing options and recommendations to leadership. Codify best practice through playbooks, templates, and repeatable implementation methodology that raise the bar across the team. What we're looking for Substantial experience in technical implementation, technical customer success, technical project/programme management, or solutions delivery for software products sold to external clients (SaaS / enterprise software). Demonstrable track record of personally owning complex, multi-stakeholder software implementations through to successful go-live and adoption. Strong project management discipline, including planning, dependency and risk management, and governance, with the judgement to know when to apply rigour and when to move fast. Excellent stakeholder management, up to and including executive/C-level sponsors, with the gravitas to hold difficult conversations and the empathy to keep relationships strong. Technical fluency, comfortable reading configurations, data mappings, logs, and API documentation, and able to converse credibly with engineers and challenge technical assumptions. Clear, structured written and verbal communication, including executive-level reporting. Comfortable operating autonomously and ambiguously as the most senior delivery person in the room. Experience implementing AI / ML or data-intensive products is desirable, along with an understanding of the specific delivery nuances these bring, such as data readiness, model behaviour, and explainability. Exposure to regulated environments, such as financial services or FCA-regulated settings, is desirable, along with familiarity with the governance and risk expectations involved. Familiarity with integration concepts such as APIs, webhooks, SSO, and data pipelines, and tooling such as Jira/Confluence, is desirable. Experience shaping implementation methodology or playbooks at a team or organisational level is desirable. A relevant certification, such as PMP, PRINCE2, or Agile/Scrum, is useful but not required.