Portfolio Analyst

About us:

The Portfolio Analyst role sits within the Transformation Management Office (TMO) and reports to the Portfolio Manager. The Transformation Office supports the senior leadership of the university in effective strategy execution, delivering a complex set of transformation initiatives and driving sustainable improvements to our core business. The TMO supports the delivery process including governance, tracking and monitoring, prioritisation, resource allocation, communication, and quality controls.

The Portfolio Analyst is part of a team working within the Transformation Management Office, supporting the Portfolio Manager and managing TMO Support Officers working across all projects that are part of the transformation portfolio providing day to day support for projects and the projects team

About the role:

Governance & Reporting

• Supporting the Portfolio Manager with governance by creating monthly papers for boards, quarterly reports, preparing programme board packs for University Enterprise Governance and regular Portfolio financial management and reporting.
• Support the Portfolio Manager ensuring governance frameworks are adhered to, including regulatory requirements and internal university policies.
• Develop and maintain portfolio, programme and project management documentation and PPM tools.
• Implement and improve standards and processes, e.g. related to project planning, financial management, reporting, change control, risk management and quality assurance.
• Developing and maintaining portfolio, programme and project dashboards and reporting, tracking forecasting, milestone progress, and risk analytics to support strategic decision-making and ensure transparent and accurate reporting of portfolio, programme and project data.

Quality Assurance

• Co-ordinate quality assurance on project management processes, including audits, reviews, compliance checks, configuration management, ensuring all controls are adhered to.

• Prepare and facilitate progress reviews and key decision meetings and actively follow-up on agreements made during these meetings.

• Provide guidance during the financial forecasting (budget) process and proactively assist regular financial management and reporting.

• Line manage and guide TMO Support Officers who provide support to the delivery teams.

• Grow people and team competences of the TMO and support the continuous improvement of practices e.g. by driving, participating, leading and implementing cross-TMO improvement projects, lessons learned processes, identifying trends and areas for improvement.

This is a hybrid working role where the role holder will spend 2 days of their working week on campus and 3 days working remotely.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Experience as a TMO / PMO Manager or practical experience as a project manager in a complex, multi-disciplinary environment.
2. Experience of setting quality standards for either portfolio, programme or project delivery.
3. Strong organisational and multi-tasking skills, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously.
4. A recognised portfolio, programme, project management qualification e.g. Prince2, MSP, Agile equivalent.
5. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with experience of engaging stakeholders at different levels.
6. Experience of managing a team including performance management and development of team members.
7. Proficiency in MS office tool kits, project management tools e.g. MS Planner, PPM, Excel, SharePoint, Power BI.

Desirable criteria

1. Knowledge, understanding and experience of working in the UK Higher Education sector.
2. Education to degree standard and/or equivalent qualifications/experience.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, and we recognise its growing role in professional work. Applicants may use AI tools to support preparation of their application, for example to research the role or structure written responses. However, applications must reflect the applicant’s own work and experience. AI tools should not be used during interviews or assessment activities unless this has been agreed in advance as a reasonable adjustment. Further guidance on the use of AI in recruitment can be found here.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.