Senior Project Manager

Initial 6 month contract Project Manager/ Senior Project Manager opportunity to join a highly respected Financial Services business in their Edinburgh office.

The Role:

Will be required to deliver change projects or small portfolios which support achievement of the Group strategy, effectively and efficiently. To ensure business outcomes are clearly understood and associated solutions are delivered to enable the business to realise benefits on time, within budget and to agreed quality standards.

Overall responsibility for planning and leading the delivery of the whole change lifecycle for projects covering both Business and Technical driven change.

Responsibilities:

• Manage complex initiatives that span one or multiple lines of business (including small portfolios)
• Provide leadership for project team by building and motivating team members to meet project goals, adhering to their responsibilities and project milestones
• Full project life cycle ownership: successful project delivery will include full implementation from initiation to deployment for one complex & major or several mid-size initiatives simultaneously
• Report on project success criteria results, metrics, test and deployment management activities
• Work creatively and analytically in a problem-solving environment demonstrating teamwork, innovation and excellence
• Participate in establishing practices, templates, policies, tools and partnerships to expand and mature these capabilities for the organization
• Prepare estimates, detailed project plans and other associated governance documentations for all phases of the project (s)
• Procure adequate resources to achieve project objectives in planned timeframes
• Manage the day-to-day project activities and resources and chairs the project management team meetings for large and complex project or small portfolios
• Monitor staff performance and feed into performance reviews
• Provide status reporting regarding project milestones, deliverable, dependencies, risks and issues, communicating across leadership
• Understand interdependencies between technology, operations and business needs
• Demonstrate a functional and technical acumen to support how solutions will address client goals while maintaining alignment with industry best practices
• Manage project scope and changes through established governance processes
• Participate and/or drive feasibility studies, vendor selections and proposals for evaluation by appropriate key stakeholders
• Act as an internal quality control check for the project
• Manage ongoing quality control and participate in quality issue resolution
• Assist in dispute, negotiation, arbitration or litigation, as needed
• Define the Statement of Work and Specifications for the requested goods and services
• Set and continually manage project(s) expectations while delegating and managing deliverables with team members and stakeholders
• Monitor, track and control outcomes to resolve issues, conflicts, dependencies and critical path deliverables
• Deliver appropriate and effective executive level communication
• Extensive understanding of project management principles, methods and techniques

Skills Required:

• Experience of leading project teams with minimal support and supervision.
• Highly competent in using planning tools and experienced in implementing and operating financial control
• frameworks
• Proven ability to demonstrate a drive for results and accountability of business and technical needs
• Proven ability to work in an ambiguous environment and collaborate across multiple areas in order to achieve a common business or technical objective
• Interpersonal skills to influence and spur change, facilitate and enhance performance within a cross -functional environment
• Demonstrate decisiveness in resolving business problems, making decisions and identifying priorities
• Develop and deliver progress reports, proposals, requirements documentation and presentations to various audiences, including project team, sponsors, CIO and key stakeholders
• Define success criteria and disseminate them to involved parties throughout project lifecycle
• Identify and develop trusted adviser relationship with project stakeholders and sponsors

Desirable

• PRINCE2 or APM qualifications and awareness of basic accounting principles of life and pensions sufficient to be able to set context of project drivers