Software Delivery Manager

Software Delivery ManagerROLE PURPOSEThe Software Delivery Manager is responsible for the effective delivery and management of software development teams across multiple client projects. The role provides leadership across delivery, people, technical coordination, client engagement, resource management, reporting, and continuous improvement.The SDM is accountable for ensuring that projects are delivered within agreed scope, timeline, quality, and commercial parameters, while maintaining strong client relationships and building a high-performing, accountable, and engaged software development team.The SDM works closely with clients, Project Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Technical Leads, Developers, Testers, and internal management to ensure successful project outcomes.KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Deliver projects according to agreed scope, timeline, quality, and commercial objectives.
• Maintain strong client satisfaction and stakeholder relationships.
• Build and maintain a high-performing, engaged, and accountable delivery team.
• Provide clear leadership, coaching, performance management, and career development for team members.
• Ensure appropriate resource and capacity planning across projects.
• Provide technical and delivery leadership to ensure teams have clear direction and can resolve delivery issues effectively.
• Ensure client and DBR stakeholders remain aligned on project status, progress, risks, issues, dependencies, and decisions.
• Ensure timely and transparent communication of project information, with no surprises to either the client or DBR management.
• Ensure adherence to company delivery standards, processes, and governance.
• Support the company’s mission, vision, values, and strategic objectives.
• Identify and implement opportunities for continuous improvement across people, process, technology, and delivery.DELIVERY & PROJECT MANAGEMENT
• Estimate project delivery effort across the software development lifecycle.
• Define project delivery plans, timelines, milestones, resource requirements, and delivery approach.
• Monitor project progress against agreed scope, schedule, quality, resource, and financial metrics.
• Manage project scope and ensure adherence to the change control process.
• Identify, manage, and escalate project risks, issues, dependencies, and decisions.
• Ensure appropriate delivery governance, reporting, and documentation.
• Prepare and present regular project status reports to DBR and client stakeholders, ensuring alignment on project health, progress, risks, issues, dependencies, financials, resources, and decisions required.
• Maintain stakeholder engagement and proactively manage expectations.
• Ensure stakeholder approval and acceptance of project deliverables.
• Ensure adherence to DBR project delivery assurance and governance standards.
• Intervene and provide direction where projects are at risk of missing agreed outcomes.REPORTING & STAKEHOLDER ALIGNMENT
• Establish and maintain a regular project reporting cadence with both client and DBR stakeholders.
• Provide clear, accurate, and timely reporting on overall project health, including scope, timeline, financials, quality, resources, risks, issues, dependencies, and key milestones.
• Ensure client and DBR stakeholders have a shared and consistent understanding of project status, progress, risks, issues, and required decisions.
• Consolidate project information from the delivery team and translate it into clear, concise, and actionable management reporting.PEOPLE & TEAM MANAGEMENT
• Lead and manage software development teams across multiple projects.
• Set clear objectives, expectations, and performance standards for team members.
• Conduct 1:1s, provide ongoing feedback, and manage employee performance.
• Recognize high performance and address performance or behavioural issues promptly and appropriately.
• Coach and mentor team members to develop their technical, delivery, and professional capabilities.
• Identify skills and capability gaps and develop appropriate training and development plans.
• Support career development, succession planning, and internal mobility.
• Monitor team engagement, workload, productivity, and overall wellbeing.
• Plan and manage team capacity and resource allocation across projects.
• Work with Recruitment and management to identify hiring requirements and workforce needs.
• Support the development of a strong culture of accountability, collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement.TECHNICAL & ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
• Provide technical direction and oversight to software development teams in partnership with Technical Leads and Solution Architects.
• Ensure development teams have a clear understanding of the technical approach and implementation plan.
• Support teams in identifying and resolving complex technical and delivery issues.
• Ensure appropriate engineering practices are followed, including code quality, code review, testing, documentation, security, and maintainability.
• Ensure technical risks, dependencies, and constraints are identified and appropriately managed.
• Promote sustainable engineering practices and appropriate management of technical debt.
• Ensure solutions are aligned with agreed architecture, technical standards, and client requirements.
• Escalate significant technical risks and decisions to the appropriate technical or management stakeholders.REQUIREMENTS & SOLUTION DELIVERY
• Work with clients and subject matter experts to understand business requirements and desired outcomes.
• Ensure requirements are sufficiently defined, understood, and agreed before development commences.
• Ensure requirements are translated into appropriate functional artefacts, including user stories, business processes, and user interface requirements where applicable.
• Ensure the product backlog is appropriately defined, prioritised, and maintained.
• Facilitate effective backlog refinement and requirements clarification.
• Work with the delivery and technical teams to estimate implementation effort.
• Ensure assumptions, exclusions, dependencies, and scope boundaries are clearly documented.
• Support resolution of client acceptance issues against agreed scope and requirements.
• Ensure development does not commence where requirements, scope, assumptions, or acceptance criteria are materially unclear or unresolved.The SDM may directly perform Business Analysis activities where required, particularly for smaller engagements or where dedicated BA resources are not available.AGILE DELIVERY & TEAM FACILITATION
• Ensure effective application of Agile delivery practices appropriate to the project and client environment.
• Ensure effective sprint planning, backlog refinement, reviews/demos, retrospectives, and daily coordination.
• Ensure development teams understand sprint objectives, priorities, commitments, and expected outcomes.
• Remove or facilitate resolution of impediments affecting delivery.
• Ensure delivery teams maintain appropriate visibility of progress, risks, issues, and dependencies.
• Work with Technical Leads, Business Analysts, Product Owners, and other delivery roles to maintain alignment throughout the delivery lifecycle.CLIENT & STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
• Build and maintain effective relationships with clients and key stakeholders.
• Understand client objectives, priorities, expectations, and business context.
• Proactively identify and address client concerns before they escalate.
• Manage difficult conversations, scope discussions, delivery risks, and escalations professionally.
• Ensure clear and timely communication of project status, risks, issues, and decisions.
• Represent DBR professionally in client meetings and engagements.
• Support senior management in executive-level client discussions where required.
• Ensure client expectations remain aligned with agreed scope, timeline, resources, and delivery commitments.COMMERCIAL & BUSINESS SUPPORT
• Support pre-sales activities including estimation, solution definition, delivery planning, and resource planning.
• Provide delivery input into proposals, Statements of Work, and project definitions.
• Monitor project resource utilisation and capacity.
• Support forecasting of delivery demand and resource requirements.
• Identify opportunities to improve delivery efficiency and commercial outcomes.
• Provide management with timely visibility of project financial and resource risks.
• Support client change requests, scope extensions, and commercial discussions where required.QUALITY, GOVERNANCE & CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
• Ensure appropriate quality assurance practices are applied throughout the delivery lifecycle.
• Ensure internal testing and quality validation are completed before client demonstrations and acceptance activities.
• Monitor recurring delivery issues and implement corrective actions.
• Identify opportunities to improve delivery processes, engineering practices, tools, and ways of working.KEY COMPETENCIES
• Software Development Delivery Management
• Project Planning and Management
• People Leadership and Performance Management
• Resource and Capacity Planning
• Technical Leadership and Engineering Practices
• Business Analysis and Problem Solving
• Agile Delivery
• Enterprise Application DeliveryLENGTH AND TYPE OF JOB-RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
• At least 7 years of experience in software development and/or technology delivery.
• At least 3 years of experience in a people leadership, delivery management, software development management, or equivalent leadership role.
• Demonstrated experience managing software development teams and multiple concurrent projects.
• Demonstrated experience in client-facing delivery and stakeholder management.