Principal project manager

Entity:

Job Family Group:

Job Description:

At bp, we provide an excellent working environment and employee benefits such as an open and inclusive culture, a great work-life balance, tremendous learning and development opportunities to craft your career path, life and health insurance, medical care package and many others.

Let me tell you about the role:

A Principal Project Manager at bp operates at a strategic and enterprise level, driving effective delivery across programmes, platforms, and capability initiatives. This individual will lead the Project Management sub-discipline, setting project management benchmarks, driving consistency in delivery standards, and ensuring best practices are embedded and followed across the organization.

In addition, this role helps advance data-driven decision making across the business field.

The successful candidate will:

• Embed data-informed thinking into how delivery decisions are made
• Strengthen the use of statistical inference, experimentation, and evidence-based insights across teams
• Coach and support project, product, and delivery practitioners to adopt meticulous, data-driven approaches

This role goes beyond coordinating delivery—it helps invent how decisions are made, validated, and communicated across the organisation.

What you will deliver:

- Enterprise delivery orchestration

• Coordinate across teams, products, and regions to support impactful execution, with a strong emphasis on data-backed prioritisation and decision-making.

- Data-led decision enablement

• Establish and embed data-driven decision-making practices across programmes and delivery teams
• Support the adoption of statistical methods (e.g., hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, causal inference) in business and delivery insights
• Ensure key delivery decisions are supported by robust quantitative evidence and clearly stated assumptions
• Partner with Data, Analytics, and Product teams to improve the quality, accessibility, and usability of data

- Practitioner capability & coaching

• Lead Communities of Practice and support practitioners in Translating data into actionable insights
• Structuring problem statements using analytical frameworks
• Applying data science techniques to delivery, forecasting, and risk management
• Strengthening data-backed storytelling and recommendations

- Insightful risk and performance management

• Apply predictive and diagnostic analytics to identify risks and delivery bottlenecks early
• Use data to move from reactive reporting to forward-looking performance management

- Stakeholder engagement and influence

• Build trusted relationships by bringing analytical thinking and statistical difficulty to decision-making discussions, influencing interested parties through evidence-based insights.

- Continuous improvement and transformation

• Drive continuous improvement
• Measurement frameworks with clear KPIs and statistical validation
• Experimentation approaches (A/B testing, pilots, controlled rollouts)
• Embedding a test-and-learn approach

What you will need to be successful:

• Strong communication with the ability to influence interested parties using data and evidence
• Critical thinking combined with focus on delivery
• Experience leading work in global, cross-functional environments
• Strong analytical capability, including an understanding of statistical methods and data science fundamentals
• Proven track record to translate data into decisions and meaningful outcomes for organization
• Strong problem-solving capability using structured and quantitative approaches
• Ability to build capability, support development, and motivate teams
• Strong understanding of delivery frameworks and governance

Preferred experience:

• Experience leading enterprise scale programmes
• Experience in environments with established data engineering, analytics, or data science practices
• Direct experience applying, or working closely with:
• Statistical modelling
• Forecasting and predictive analytics
• Experimentation frameworks (A/B testing, hypothesis testing)
• Experience working in organisations that value data-informed decision making
• Exposure to data platforms, analytics tools, or advanced business intelligence environments
• Experience mentor teams to adopt data-led decision-making approaches

Education:

• Degree or equivalent experience in Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field
• Advanced degree or equivalent experience (e.g., MSc or PhD) in a quantitative field preferred
• PMI or equivalent certification preferred

We support our people to learn and grow in a diverse and challenging environment. We believe that our team is strengthened by diversity. We are committed to crafting an inclusive environment in which everyone is respected and treated fairly.

There are many aspects of our employees’ lives that are meaningful, so we offer benefits to enable your work to fit with your life. These benefits can include flexible working options, collaboration spaces in a modern office environment, and many others benefits.

Travel Requirement

Relocation Assistance:

Remote Type:

Skills:

Legal Disclaimer:

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics like race, religion, color, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, veteran status or disability status. Individuals with an accessibility need may request an adjustment/accommodation related to bp’s recruiting process (e.g., accessing the job application, completing required assessments, participating in telephone screenings or interviews, etc.). If you would like to request an adjustment/accommodation related to the recruitment process, please contact us.

If you are selected for a position and depending upon your role, your employment may be contingent upon adherence to local policy. This may include pre-placement drug screening, medical review of physical fitness for the role, and background checks.