Senior Portfolio Officer

About the Role

Senior Portfolio Officer
Location: Teddington (Hybrid – typically 2 days per week on site, with flexibility to reduce to 1 day depending on business need)

Lead Governance & Assurance
You will take ownership of assurance activity across programmes and projects, ensuring it is robust, proportionate and genuinely adds value.
• Lead health checks, start up reviews, stage gates and deep dive assurance activity
• Ensure governance cycles run effectively, with clear, high quality evidence presented to boards and committees
• Provide independent, constructive challenge to test readiness, controls and delivery confidence
• Capture lessons learned and embed them across the portfolio

Operate as a Senior Leader
This role requires demonstrable leadership. You’ll be expected to set direction, influence outcomes and act as a trusted authority — not simply work within existing structures.
• Act as a senior point of contact for delivery teams on PPM frameworks, standards and assurance expectations
• Provide leadership and direction to Portfolio Office colleagues when embedded in programmes
• Communicate confidently and credibly with senior sponsors, executives and board level stakeholders
• Be comfortable challenging assumptions and decisions in a constructive, evidence based way

Manage Risk, Dependencies & Value
You’ll play a key role in ensuring NPL understands where its real risks and value lie.
• Monitor and escalate major risks, issues and dependencies surfaced through governance and assurance
• Ensure RAID information is credible, consistent and aligned to agreed standards
• Provide informed commentary on benefits, outcomes and value delivery
• Champion a culture of benefits realisation and value led decision making

Provide Financial & Portfolio Insight
When embedded within programmes, you’ll support financial discipline and portfolio level insight.
• Support budget tracking, forecasting and financial inputs
• Provide analysis to inform prioritisation, sequencing and resource planning
• Contribute to evidence based decision making at portfolio level

Drive Continuous Improvement
You won’t just operate the system — you’ll improve it.
• Lead enhancements to governance frameworks, assurance approaches and portfolio processes
• Benchmark against external good practice to keep NPL’s standards credible and effective
• Actively shape how the Portfolio Office evolves as a Centre of Excellence

About You

About You

Essential
• Significant experience in a senior PMO, Portfolio Office or assurance role within complex change environments
• Strong understanding of portfolio, programme and project governance and assurance
• Proven ability to lead, influence and challenge senior stakeholders, not just collaborate
• Excellent analytical skills, sound judgement and confident communication
• Comfortable operating in delivery facing environments where credibility matters

Highly Desirable
• Experience working within a Hub and Spoke or Centre of Excellence model
• Background in complex, multi stakeholder or public sector organisations
• Professional qualification or equivalent experience (e.g. APM, MSP, P3O)
• Experience supporting portfolio prioritisation and benefits led decision making

We actively recruit citizens of all backgrounds, but the nature of our work in specific departments means that nationality, residency and security requirements can be more tightly defined than others. You will be asked about this throughout the recruitment process. To work at NPL, you will need to obtain BPSS security clearance.

Please note: Applications will be reviewed, and interviews conducted throughout the duration of this advert therefore we may at any time bring the closing date forward. We encourage all interested applicants to apply as soon as possible.

About Us

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is a world-leading centre of excellence that provides cutting-edge measurement science, engineering and technology to underpin prosperity and quality of life in the UK. Find out more about what it is like working here - The measure of us - Overview