About the role
Permanent
From £83,000 to £92,000 + Pension + PMI + ShareSave + 6.6 weeks holiday + Company car allowance + Hybrid Working
Reports to: Director of Retail Operations
Direct Reports: A team of 3 Store Development Project Managers
Location: The role is based in our Store Support Office (SSO) in Eastleigh, Southampton, with flexibility to work from home or B&Q locations. However, you must be able to do a minimum of 2-3 days a week in SSO Southampton Office to be face to face with your team and cross functional stakeholders. Occasional nationwide store travel & external meetings as required. Requirement to work occasional weekends on a rotated basis, to support Operational cover.
We believe anyone can improve their home to make life better. From our Southampton Store Support office (SSO) we equip our stores, our people, and our whole business with everything it takes to help our millions of customers create a home they’ll love. Join us as a Store Transformation Development Lead and you’ll be a big part of this.
Key responsibilities
Step into an exciting new leadership role at the heart of B&Q’s retail transformation. You will be accountable for the leading our Store Transformation Development team at the heart of our store transformation programme. You’ll operate as a senior leader connecting strategy, investment decisions, test & learn and operational delivery so stores can make every customer count, every day. You’ll set direction, establish governance and create pace with transformation. You’ll work in close partnership with other functions, but with a clear RACI, to align senior stakeholders around a clear set of priorities and deliver strong outcomes.
You will be accountable crafting and delivering the end-to-end store transformation agenda. You’ll be setting the estate-wide roadmap for change, governing prioritisation and preparing the execution of store-ready change at pace. You’ll use innovation, external benchmarking and internal insights to shape solutions that enhance trading, improve customer and colleague outcomes, and are simple to execute in 300+ stores.
You’ll set clear success measures, develop and sponsor robust business cases, and influence decisions that balance customer promise, colleague experience and commercial return. Leading a team of Store Development Project Managers, you’ll run end-to-end test & learn cycles and ensure changes land safely, consistently and embed over time. You’ll also deliver against our growth & simplification agenda by reducing cost, improving efficiency and releasing time back to store teams.
Key Accountabilities & Deliverables
Strategic Thinking and Future Focused Vision:
- Turn big-picture retail strategy into a clear plan that focuses on what stores need. Prioritise actions that save costs, make work simpler, and improve experiences for colleagues and customers. Lead decision-making with confidence, ensuring changes make a real difference in stores.
- Guide, motivate and create the conditions for a high performing team to discover needs, develop and test solutions, and prepare store-ready rollouts. Make sure everyone’s work aligns and clear RACIs are in place for effective development.
- Set clear ways of working, governance and reporting so priorities, dependencies and decisions are visible and progress is maintained at pace.
Innovation, Continuous Improvement & Directional Leadership:
- Oversee all trials and tests in stores. Ensure new ideas are feasible, practical, and work well in different store types. Spot risks early and address them using tried-and-tested measures.
- Be the strong retail voice when working with technology, supply chain, and other teams. Make sure solutions fit real store life and are easy for colleagues to use. Keep communications simple and enable clear processes so stores know exactly what to do, and can achieve it consistently.
Growth Enabler & Customer-Centric Mindset:
- Lead retail efforts to cut costs, remove complexity, and save time in stores to put colleague time back in front of the customer. Turn ideas into business cases, prove the benefits, and make sure savings are tracked and delivered.
- Identify development opportunities, define problem statements and work collaboratively with relevant teams to deliver business solutions at pace and scale.
- Oversee management of store development projects from start to finish. Define goals, spot risks, ensure stores are ready, and measure benefits.
- Lead the team to define success measures for each initiative and work with Finance and stakeholders to track benefits, ensuring improvements are sustained and projects are revisited where required.
Collaboration, Senior Influencing and external learning:
- Benchmark store operations against industry leaders, bring in external insight and foster a culture of continuous improvement. Always seeking better ways to serve customers and colleagues, and future-proof the store estate. Check that new ways of working are adopted and improved where needed.
- Be a strong presenter who can influence senior leaders effectively, build rapport and gain buy in through great storytelling.
Key Business Relationships
- SSO – Strategy, Technology, Logistics, Customer, Technology, Retail Operations
- As required - Kingfisher Group, Finance, HR teams
- External – suppliers and third parties. Plus expectation to maintain strong external relationships with other retailers and industry experts
- Retail – Stores, Regional Managers, Divisional Managers, TradePoint, Field teams
Required skills & experience
- Proven success leading complex change in a transformation or operational improvement context, ensuring solutions land first time and are sustained at scale. Experience in leading across different Support Functions by building alignment, removing blockers and unlocking progress.
- Strong ability to turn complex problems into clear, scalable solutions that work nationwide in stores, including those with different store formats and trading cycles.
- Experienced in building and running test & learn approaches (including hypotheses, measures, test design and evaluation). Proven success record of converting insight into scalable ways of working and operating models.
- Confident working with data to diagnose issues, quantify opportunity and tell a clear story - balancing pace with rigour. Sets clear measures of success and links delivery to commercial outcomes.
- Good financial awareness, including benefits modelling, business case development and cost tracking to ensure value is delivered and sustained.
- Skilled in coaching others, adapting leadership style and building high-trust relationships across the organisation to deliver through others.
- Strong stakeholder management and communication skills. Able to build confidence with senior leaders, remove barriers and create clear, practical guidance that works for stores.
- Good understanding of retail operations and the realities of delivering change across multiple store formats, regions and trading cycles.
- Customer-centric mindset with an instinct for balancing colleague experience, operational execution and commercial goals.
- Strong programme/project management capability, with experience planning, coordinating and landing multiple initiatives in parallel in a fast-moving environment.
- Proficient in Excel, PowerPoint, Monday.com, Copilot and related project management and collaboration tools.
What's in it for me?
As part of a great team, you’ll be valued for who you are. We’re committed to making B&Q more diverse and representative of the communities we serve, where everyone can feel they belong and have equal opportunities. You will have access to a range of networks that represent our colleagues and allies and help us to continue to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our business.
We also recognise that wellness means different things to different people, and we want to help colleagues be at their best and feel well by offering a range of benefits to help you. As well as a competitive salary, our benefits package includes an award-winning pension scheme, bonus, ShareSave options, 6.6 weeks holiday, payroll giving, an Employee Assistance Programme, shopping discounts, colleague wellbeing benefits and lots more!
So we can support you during the application or interview process, please contact recruitment@b-and-q.co.uk for any recruitment adjustments.
We want to ensure that all employees, future employees and applicants to all Kingfisher companies are treated equally regardless of age, gender, marital or civil partnership status, colour, ethnic or national origin, culture, religious belief, philosophical belief, political opinion, disability, gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.
If you require any additional support or adjustments to help you make an application, please contact us at recruitment@b-and-q.co.uk.
Training &
development
Learn & Develop at B&Q
When you join B&Q, we want you to be all you can be. From the minute you walk through our doors to the exciting moment you make that next career move, we're here to help you make the most of every opportunity. Thanks to our friendly learning system, LEO, we make sure you always have the support you need to take on every challenge and fit your learning around your life. Here, we know that the best way to grow is together.
Flexible learning with LEO
LEO is your every day, on the go learning and development partner. Helping you build the knowledge you need now and in the future. With LEO, you can access training and content, anywhere, anytime and on any device. You can even influence the type of training on offer by rating and recommending content, and letting us know what we can do to improve. Award-winning and featuring over 500 different learning activities - like short videos, articles, workshops and webinars - think of LEO as your 24/7 training pal, designed to help you make the most of your B&Q career journey.
Developing in role
Learning never stops at B&Q. Whether you've been in your role for one day or five years, there's always something to be curious about. It's why we're always creating learning opportunities and experiences that'll give you the chance to develop your skills. Like our First Line Manager programme: a course that helps our newest line managers build their confidence and management skills. Or our Leadership Development programme that challenges our more experienced leaders to reflect on and adapt their approach for our ever-evolving ways of working.
Building expertise and know-how
We believe anyone can learn the technical skills to do their job with excellence. It's all about attitude and behaviour here. So, if you're passionate about customer service and design, we'll teach you how to create beautiful kitchens. If you're someone who loves being outdoors, we'll help you learn about our garden ranges. And, if you're someone who just loves what we do but doesn't know where to start, we'll help you find the perfect role for you to grow into.
Accelerated Development Talent Programmes
Whatever goal you're working to at B&Q, we want to help you get there. We do this by designing a number of programmes which help you to practice your skills and learn new ones, gain valuable experiences, learn from others and jump on opportunities that are right for you. From leaders taking their first steps into management to those simply looking for a new challenge, we're there to make sure you achieve your ambitions.
Induction
At B&Q, we want every new colleague to understand our values, our customers, and how we work together to achieve our purpose. That’s why we’ve designed an induction programme that’ll give you real insight into our business, our culture and help you feel included from day one. For your first few weeks on the job you’ll work with your team and line manager, mixing online learning with practical tasks, to grow your knowledge a little every day.
Explore our
store support office
Facilities
In B&Q house, you’ll enjoy an onsite gym, a subsidised Costa, a canteen and restaurant, prayer room, plus open plan and cosy work spaces, an outdoor picnic area, and bike sheds for those who cycle in.
Sustainability
B&Q House has a biomass boiler, solar panels and a rainwater harvesting system. Our building also makes use of upcycled and recycled furniture and fittings, and features natural ventilation, heat retention and CO2 management, all via our very own weather station on the roof.
Ready to apply?
Step 1:
Apply via bandqcareers.com
Step 2:
We'll contact you for a phone interview
Step 3:
We’ll carry out a face to face or online interview (and we may request a 2nd interview if the role you're applying for is more complex).
Step 4:
We’ll contact you with feedback, and maybe even a job offer.
Check out our FAQs for more information about interviewing at B&Q.