Transformation Manager – Timetabling (Strategic Change Leader)

Transformation Manager – Timetabling (Strategic Change Leader)

Day rate: £500 per day (Umbrella)
Contract: 6 months
Location: Central London / Hybrid (36.5 hours per week)

This is a role for a transformation leader, not “just” a timetabling expert. You’ll be responsible for driving a high‑profile institution‑wide timetabling transformation at pace – setting the direction, mobilising delivery, and bringing senior stakeholders with you.
The opportunityYou will lead the mobilisation and early delivery of a major Timetabling Transformation programme within a leading London university. This means turning a complex, ambiguous brief into a clear roadmap, structuring workstreams, aligning resources, and driving visible progress within months rather than years.

Working at the heart of the university’s Strategic Change function, you’ll partner with senior academic and professional services leaders to shape the future operating model for student services, with timetabling as a critical foundation. You’ll blend hands‑on delivery discipline with the ability to inspire, influence, and energise others.
What you’ll do

• Lead the mobilisation of an institution‑wide Timetabling Transformation roadmap, defining scope, priorities, delivery model, and milestones.
• Bring structure and pace to a complex change environment, moving quickly from problem definition to delivery of tangible outcomes and benefits.
• Act as a senior point of coordination across faculties, student services, IT and registry, aligning competing priorities and securing decisions at pace.
• Provide visible, motivational leadership to project managers and subject matter experts, setting high standards for delivery, collaboration and ownership.
• Shape future‑state student service and timetabling operating models, using data, user insight, and service design principles.
• Establish and embed effective governance, risk management and benefits tracking, providing clear reporting to senior leadership.

About youYou are an energetic, senior change leader who can operate comfortably with Deans, Directors and professional services heads, while still rolling up your sleeves to get programmes moving. You bring credibility in higher education or a comparable complex environment, and you can evidence leading large‑scale service or timetabling transformation.

Essential experience

• Significant experience leading complex service or timetabling transformation in a university or similarly complex organisation.
• Proven track record of mobilising and delivering multi‑workstream change at pace, from ambiguous starting points to measurable outcomes.
• Experience influencing and aligning senior stakeholders across multiple faculties or service areas, resolving conflicts and securing buy‑in.
• Background in operating model design, service redesign or large‑scale process improvement.
• Experience leading and inspiring project managers and cross‑functional teams in a matrix environment.

Skills and leadership style

• Strategic thinker who can also execute – comfortable defining vision and then driving detailed delivery.
• Confident, energetic communicator who can motivate, challenge and bring people with you.
• Strong relationship builder with the credibility to operate at senior levels and the resilience to navigate competing priorities.
• Highly organised, delivery‑focused, with a clear approach to governance, risk, and benefits realisation.
• Collaborative, low‑ego leader who creates momentum, clarity and accountability across diverse teams.

If you’re a proven transformation leader who thrives on complexity, pace and visibility – and you want to leave a lasting impact on student experience and institutional effectiveness – we’d like to hear from you.

 Apply now to join a purpose-driven team shaping smarter, more student-focused operations at one of the UK’s most ambitious universities.