Principal Program Manager

About the role

As we move to smaller, more autonomous Product and Engineering teams aligned to brands and core platforms, delivery ownership sits directly within those teams. In this model, Program no longer acts as a coordination layer. Instead, it becomes a strategic function focused on ensuring that our most complex, high-impact initiatives are structured, aligned, and deliver real outcomes. This is the most senior individual contributor role in Program Management, equivalent to Director level, focused on leading the organisation's most complex and strategically important transformation work. You will act as a strategic partner to Product, Engineering, and Business leadership, leading the initiatives where complexity, scale, and cross-domain dependencies require deliberate orchestration. These are not incremental efforts. They are the programs that shape how we evolve as a company, including platform modernisation, data and AI transformation, and product or technical strategy shifts that cut across multiple domains. Your accountability is not simply to ensure delivery. It is to ensure that what we build works in practice, that business and technical change land together, that teams are aligned in how they execute, and that the outcomes we are aiming for are realised. In the absence of a formal Product Operations function, you will also play a critical role in shaping how complex work operates across the organisation, stepping in where standard team-level ways of working are insufficient and helping evolve the operating model over time. You will not manage a team. Your influence comes from clarity of thinking, strength of partnership, and your ability to bring structure to complexity. Scope and Impact You will personally lead a small number of the organisation's most critical programs, such as A cross-domain program to realise reduced investment in non-differentiating capabilities, shifting away from building commodity technologies and toward leveraging best-in-class solutions while focusing internal effort on areas that create distinct value A business transformation program, in partnership with the Transformation organisation, to realise technology objectives that will unlock business transformation goals across Product, Engineering, and the wider enterprise, including the adoption of AI-enabled ways of working These programs are central to our strategy. Your role is to ensure they are not only ambitious, but executable, adopted, and impactful. How You will operate At this level, your role is to make complex work possible, not by managing from a distance, but by being actively engaged where it matters most. You will operate both strategically and hands-on. You will shape direction, structure, and decisions at a senior level, while also working directly within programs to resolve ambiguity, unblock progress, and bring clarity to execution. You will: Work directly within your programs to structure work, resolve dependencies, and address issues as they arise Bring clarity where there is ambiguity, aligning teams on sequencing, priorities, and approach Step into critical moments to unblock teams and drive progress across domains Balance long-term transformation goals with the realities of day-to-day execution Stay close enough to the work to understand where plans break down, and adjust accordingly At the same time, you will operate as a strategic partner: Shaping how large initiatives are structured and governed Influencing direction across Product, Engineering, and Business leadership Ensuring that programs are aligned to real business outcomes Challenging decisions where sequencing, architecture, or assumptions are not viable You will also play a key role in evolving how the organisation works: Identifying where coordination overhead, unclear ownership, or misaligned processes are slowing teams down Establishing lightweight structures to enable execution where

Additional Information

Condé Nast is a global media company producing the highest quality content with a footprint of more than 1 billion consumers in 32 territories through print, digital, video and social platforms. The company's portfolio includes many of the world's most respected and influential media properties including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Self, GQ, The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler/Traveller, Allure, AD, Bon Appétit and Wired, among others. Job Description Location: London, GB Condé Nast is a global media company, home to iconic brands including Vogue, GQ, Glamour, AD, Vanity Fair and Wired, among many others. Our award-winning content reaches 84 million consumers in print, 367 million in digital and 379 million across social platforms, and generates more than 1 billion video views each month. We are headquartered in London and New York, and operate in 31 markets worldwide, including China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico & Latin America, Spain, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S., with local licence partners across the globe.

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