Innovation Portfolio Manager
Roke
Built on a 70-year heritage, Roke offers specialist knowledge in sensors, communications, cyber, and AI and ML. We change the way organisations think and act – through dynamic insights from the analysis of multiple layers of data. We take care of the innovative, technical stuff that keeps everyone safe – that’s our mission, passion, and motivation.
Role
The Science & Technology (S&T) function within Roke Global Services is being established to provide a coherent coordination layer across innovation, strategy, road mapping and knowledge management. The function balances client demand, technology push and operational priorities to shape direction, accelerate innovation pull-through, maximise reuse of knowledge and intellectual property, and build future-ready capability across Global Services. This role will sit at the centre of that function, helping connect people, processes, information and priorities into a single, organised and effective operating rhythm.
We are looking for an experienced, organised and highly detail-oriented Delivery Manager to help cohere the whole S&T function. Reporting into the S&T leadership team, the role will coordinate the moving parts of the function, provide ownership of selected areas of activity, and ensure the right cadence, governance, reporting and follow-through are in place. The successful candidate will be comfortable operating across multiple stakeholders and topics, from applied innovation and strategic planning through to communications, knowledge sharing and cross-functional coordination. Experience with innovation, science and technology environments is essential; experience with Power BI and AI-enabled approaches would be highly beneficial to improve dashboards, reporting and knowledge analysis.
Job Purpose & Key Responsibilities
- Act as the central coordination point for the S&T function, ensuring coherence across applied innovation, road mapping, strategy and knowledge management
- Establish and maintain the operating rhythm for S&T, including governance, planning cycles, reviews, reporting, action tracking and stakeholder engagement
- Own selected parts of the function as required, driving them forward from concept through implementation and into business-as-usual operation
- Coordinate the interfaces between S&T and Engineering, Product, Sales, Accounts, Partner Services, Operations and wider leadership to ensure alignment and progress
- Support the management of innovation activity, including tracking ideas, coordinating gate reviews, maintaining portfolio visibility and helping ensure pull-through into deliverable capability or product outcomes
- Maintain a clear programme-level view of priorities, risks, issues, dependencies, resource demand and delivery progress across the S&T function
- Develop dashboards, reporting views and management information to support decision-making, transparency and performance tracking across S&T
- Coordinate knowledge management activities across S&T, including the flow, curation and distribution of insight from problem books, IP, Communities of Interest, roadshows, show-and-tells and lunch-and-learns
- Support the creation and maintenance of integrated roadmaps covering future skills, tooling, technology direction and capability readiness
- Help shape and coordinate strategic initiatives, including AI-related activity, communications planning, academic engagement and thought leadership where appropriate
- Build trusted working relationships with senior stakeholders, sub-function leads and contributors across the business, ensuring actions are understood and followed through
- Ensure artefacts, plans, trackers, decisions and outputs are well structured, version controlled and maintained to a high standard
- Provide timely and accurate reporting, including progress updates, KPIs, risks, issues and recommendations for intervention or escalation
- Identify opportunities to improve how S&T works, including the use of automation, AI-assisted analysis, Power BI dashboards and improved knowledge management practices
- Uphold Roke policies, governance requirements and good delivery discipline while remaining pragmatic, collaborative and outcome-focused
Knowledge, Skills & Experience
- Strong programme or senior project management experience in complex, cross-functional environments
- Experience working in science, technology, innovation, engineering or adjacent delivery settings where multiple workstreams and stakeholders must be coordinated
- Excellent organisational skills with a very high level of attention to detail, able to track many moving parts without losing sight of the bigger picture
- Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to bring together contributors from different disciplines and levels of seniority
- Demonstrable experience of turning ambiguity into structure through plans, governance, reporting, prioritisation and follow-through
- Strong analytical capability, able to interpret information, identify themes, connect dependencies and support evidence-based decision-making
- Experience creating dashboards, reports or management information using tools such as Power BI would be highly desirable
- Familiarity with AI tools, AI-enabled workflows, or knowledge management approaches would be beneficial, particularly where these improve insight, efficiency or decision support
- Good understanding of innovation processes, technology trends, and how ideas progress into operational value, products or customer outcomes
- Comfortable working across strategy, planning, knowledge sharing, coordination and delivery support rather than within a single narrow project scope
- Proactive, self-starting and adaptable, with the judgement to escalate when needed and the discipline to drive actions to completion
- Relevant project, programme or portfolio management qualifications are desirable (e.g. APM, MSP, Prince2, PMI or similar)
Where you’ll work
Romsey (HQ) - You’ll find our Romsey site located within beautiful Hampshire countryside, close to the picturesque New Forest District and not far from a superb stretch of the south coast. This is no corporate concrete jungle; this is a manor house site, with ample parking an on-site gym and a driveway full of daffodils in the spring.
Woking - You’ll find our Woking site in a modern building on the outskirts of London. Rated excellent for sustainability by BREEAM & Fitwel certified – you’ll feel better for visiting. This site provides key links to our customers in London, is a 5-minute walk from the train station, has secure parking nearby and dedicated cycle storage.
Clearance
Due to the nature of this position, we require you to be eligible to achieve DV clearance
