Business Manager

Role Overview

We are hiring a CITO Business Manager to provide structured business management support to the Chief Information & Technology Officer and the CITO leadership team. This senior role will help shape and maintain the executive office operating rhythm, strengthen governance and reporting, connect priorities across the leadership team and ensure actions, risks and decisions are followed through with pace, judgement and professionalism.

What you will help us to achieve

Executive office leadership and operating rhythm
•    Own and continuously improve the CITO operating rhythm, including key meetings, planning cycles, reporting timelines, action logs, decision logs and executive follow-up.
•    Maintain a forward-looking view of the CITO calendar, ensuring paper deadlines, pre-reads, dependencies, travel, annual leave and critical decisions are visible and managed.
•    Ensure the office runs with discipline through periods of leadership change, recruitment, transition or increased delivery pressure.
Strategy execution and transformation support
•    Support the CITO strategic agenda, leadership onboarding, strategic narrative and communication of priorities.
•    Coordinate cross-functional strategic initiatives across Europe, including technology transformation, AI adoption, cloud platform activity, procurement and supplier priorities, and other initiatives as required.
•    Help leaders define success criteria, decision points, ownership, benefits, risks and trade-offs at the outset of major pieces of work.
Governance, reporting and management information
•    Coordinate regular CITO reporting, including quarterly CITO reporting, financial reporting, security reporting and group reporting requirements.
•    Review and quality check executive packs and papers, ensuring content is concise, accurate, audience appropriate and clear on the decision or action required.
•    Work with content owners to improve weak or incomplete inputs and convert them into clear, coherent executive materials.

More specific responsibilities will include

Stakeholder management, communication and influence
•    Act as a trusted point of contact between the CITO office, Europe, Lifeco and other senior stakeholders, ensuring queries and executive requests are managed with pace and judgement.
•    Build strong relationships across technology, finance, risk, procurement, data, AI, security and business stakeholders to resolve issues and improve collaboration.
•    Translate complex or technical topics into simple, business-ready messages for senior leaders, committees and wider colleague audiences.
Risk, control and operational resilience
•    Promote  a strong risk and control mindset across the CITO rhythm, making material risks, audit actions, security matters, resilience activity and governance dependencies visible.
•    Support executive preparation on disaster recovery, patching, security metrics, vulnerability management, operational resilience and board-level technology matters.
•    Track open issues, recommendations and control actions with relevant risk, audit and technology colleagues so that ownership and progress are clear.
EA team leadership and office operating model
•    Provide direction and standards for the CITO Executive Assistant team, ensuring a professional, consistent and forward-looking operating rhythm.
•    Ensure the EA team maintains a ten-week forward plan covering calendars, meeting preparation, reminders, papers, actions, annual leave, travel and critical deadlines.
•    Clarify handoffs between Business Manager and EA responsibilities for agendas, minutes, actions, follow-up, escalation and calendar discipline.

What you will need to be successful in the role

•    Strong business management experience in a senior, complex, cross-functional or matrix environment.
•    Excellent judgement, with the ability to interpret imperfect or complex information, identify the real issue, build a clear story and escalate where needed.
•    Strong written communication, storytelling and presentation capability, including concise executive papers and leadership communications.
•    Proven ability to support executive governance, senior meeting cycles, performance reporting, management information and action follow-through.
•    Good understanding of technology, data, cloud, AI, cyber/security, operational resilience and technology transformation. Deep technical expertise is not required.
•    Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the confidence to challenge constructively, connect activity and follow up with senior leaders.
•    Commercial and financial awareness, including experience with KPIs, financial reporting, benefits, budgets or managed service reporting.
•    Experience leading or coordinating a small team, function or operating rhythm, including setting standards and creating clarity for others.