Head of Transformation

About the role

This is a senior transformation leadership role at Matalan, responsible for driving and coordinating the organisation’s strategic change agenda. Reporting into the Director of IT & Transformation, the role sits at the centre of business transformation, ensuring strategic priorities are translated into clear delivery plans, measurable outcomes and tangible business impact.

The Head of Transformation will lead the transformation function, overseeing a broad portfolio of change initiatives across the business. A key focus of the role is bringing structure, visibility and governance to how transformation activity is prioritised, managed and delivered, while ensuring alignment between strategy, operational delivery and organisational capacity.

The role also plays a significant part in embedding the company’s OKR and performance framework, helping leaders define measurable objectives, track progress and improve accountability across the organisation. Working closely with Executive stakeholders, the successful individual will help create the governance, performance rhythms and ways of working needed to deliver large-scale strategic change effectively.

Alongside strategic portfolio oversight, the role will lead Project Managers and Business Analysts, ensuring the right capability, resource allocation and delivery standards are in place to support business priorities.

This position would suit someone who enjoys operating at both strategic and operational level — combining governance, transformation leadership, stakeholder management and performance improvement within a fast-paced retail environment.

About You

You will be an experienced transformation, PMO or portfolio leader with a strong track record of delivering strategic change within a complex organisation. Comfortable operating at Executive level, you will be skilled in bringing clarity, structure and momentum to large-scale transformation programmes.

You will have experience managing enterprise-wide portfolios of change, including prioritisation, governance, benefits realisation, dependency management and risk oversight. You’ll understand how to connect business strategy to delivery and will be confident challenging, influencing and aligning senior stakeholders to drive progress.

You will be accountable for shaping, governing, orchestrating and driving enterprise change and business outcomes across multiple initiatives and executive stakeholders. This aligns with the focus on OKRs, business value, strategic initiatives and change leadership visible in your transformation documentation.

The ideal candidate will also have experience implementing or embedding organisational performance frameworks such as OKRs, helping businesses create stronger accountability, focus and measurable outcomes.

You’ll be someone who can balance strategic thinking with practical execution able to improve ways of working, strengthen governance and create confidence in transformation delivery across the organisation.

We’re looking for someone who:

• Created and led enterprise transformation functions
• Built transformation governance and reporting
• Driven OKR or benefits realisation frameworks
• Facilitated executive alignment across competing priorities
• Led business operating model redesign
• Managed multiple strategic initiatives simultaneously
• Delivered measurable business outcomes, not just project outputs
• Influenced senior leadership teams without direct authority
• Has experience facilitating Executive-level governance or performance discussions
• Understands portfolio management, benefits tracking and transformation governance
• Has led teams such as Project Managers and Business Analysts
• Thrives in fast-paced, evolving environments
• Ideally has experience within retail, consumer or omnichannel businesses
• Holds relevant project or portfolio management qualifications such as MSP, MoP, PRINCE2, PMI, Agile or SAFe
• This is an opportunity to shape and influence transformation at enterprise level within a well-known UK retail brand undergoing significant strategic change.

About Matalan

Matalan is a leading UK and international omnichannel fashion and homeware retailer, on a mission to be the first choice for outstanding style, quality and value for her and her loved ones. With a large store network in excess of 263 UK and international stores and an integrated e-commerce platform, Matalan is a trusted brand which puts its customer at the heart of its business and delivers unrivalled product choice and exceptional style and quality to over 8 million loyal shoppers every year. Matalan is famously committed to offering a compelling style, value and quality focused fashion and home offering, that continues to help millions of UK household budgets go further. 

Benefits

In addition to competitive salaries, we also offer the below core benefits:

• 20% staff discount, which increases with length of service
• Thrive Recognition Scheme 
• Wellbeing support provided by the Retail Trust 
• Life Assurance 
• Retail Rewards platform offering discounts for other retailers 
• Pension Scheme 
• Access to a wide range of career development 
• Additional benefits may apply depending on your role and area of the business