Delivery Lead

About the role

You will take responsibility for how an engagement actually delivers: the cadence, the metrics, the funding conversation and the engineering practice underneath it. Often you will be resetting a delivery model that has calcified over years.

This role is as much coaching as it is management. The measure of success is that the client keeps running the model after we leave.

About OneCluster

OneCluster is a product and engineering company that embeds inside regulated institutions across Africa: banks, telcos, health systems, logistics operators and energy companies. We were founded in 2026 by practitioners who spent their careers inside those organisations.

We work embedded in our customers’ own teams rather than alongside them. That means their repository, their CI, their on-call rotation, and their constraints: regulatory scrutiny, legacy integration, and a business that cannot absorb a bad release. Every piece of work has a partner on it, in the standup rather than on the proposal.

The measure of our work is that the customer keeps running the practice after we leave. That shapes how we hire: we look for people who can raise the standard of the team around them, not only ship their own work.

The team you join

You will run delivery for one or two embedded crews, working with the client's own delivery, risk and change functions.

What you will do

• Establish delivery metrics and use them to drive decisions rather than to report upward.
• Redesign ceremonies, funding cycles and dependency management with the client.
• Coach delivery managers and engineering leads inside client squads.
• Hold the line on sustainable pace and surface risk early to sponsors.
• Run the commercial and staffing shape of your engagement alongside a partner.

Minimum qualifications

• Seven or more years in delivery leadership across multiple teams or a portfolio.
• Fluency in flow metrics: lead time, throughput, change failure rate, MTTR.
• Credibility with engineers; you have been close enough to the build to be trusted.
• Experience changing how an organisation delivers, not just running a plan.
• Composure in front of executives when the news is bad.

Preferred qualifications

• Background in engineering or product before delivery.
• Experience in regulated programme environments with audit obligations.
• Formal coaching training.

Your first three months

1. Find out where delivery actually stalls, which is rarely where the status report says.
2. Establish a cadence people find useful rather than one they endure.
3. Get a real, defensible plan in front of the client sponsor within a month.
4. By month three, be forecasting accurately enough that surprises are rare.

Compensation and benefits

Rates are agreed per engagement and depend on scope and seniority. We discuss numbers openly on the first call, before you spend time on a practical.

• Rates are agreed per engagement and discussed openly on the first call, before you spend time on a practical.
• Remote across Africa, with on-site weeks where the engagement calls for them.
• Work embedded inside regulated institutions, on systems with real consequences, alongside senior engineers who review your work and expect you to review theirs.
• Small crews and direct access to partners, with no layers between you and the decisions.
• Long relationships. We would rather work with the same capable people across engagements than hire for a single project.
• Straight answers. We tell you what we can and cannot offer before you commit, and we do not promise what we cannot deliver.

How we interview

The whole process is normally two to three weeks, and we work around your current job.

1. Application review. A partner reads every application. You hear back either way, usually within two working days.
2. Intro call, 45 minutes. Your background, what you want next, and honest answers about the work, the rate and the constraints.
3. Practical session, 2 hours. A realistic problem close to what the role actually involves, scheduled around you and sized to respect your time. We tell you the shape it takes when we book it.
4. Practical review, 60 minutes. We walk through what you built, why, and what you would change with more time.
5. Partner conversation, 45 minutes. Scope, expectations, terms, and your questions.
6. Decision, normally within two working days of the last conversation.

How to apply

Send an application through the form. A partner reads every one, and you will hear back either way. If you are unsure whether you qualify, apply anyway and say what you are unsure about.

We will tell you what we can and cannot offer before you commit to anything.

Apply for this role →