Senior Project Manager

Hybrid role.

As a Senior Project Manager, you are accountable for the successful delivery of large projects. They are more complex than you are required to lead as a Project Manager.

Making sure the customers' needs are met. You manage the entire project lifecycle, from planning to go-live, tracking budget, risks, and scope. You keep all processes efficient and clear for the team and customer while adhering to the Backbase way of working applied in a practical way. You can handle the project yourself and exception based ask for help. 

You create a seamless environment where every single player, both on the customer and Backbase side, understands their role and is empowered to excel. While you maintain oversight on deadlines and key dates, you take care of three main areas;

You ensure that  the BA lead secures necessary sign-offs (BSDs), runs a crystal clear jira admin with one source of truth

You ensure that the Engineering Manager with his team focus on delivering the BSD’s.

You control the customer on scope and agreements made to deliver items from their end.

You are a coordinator in all aspects: Governance, facilitate administration, reporting, meeting setup, steerco’s, stakeholder management (internally and externally), budget, payments, team planning and all other elements the team need to be taken away from them, to work in focus on their task. You are able to do that in a way you disturb the teams as little as possible yet are in good contact.  And you know how to make use of AI as much as possible in your project management tasks.

Qualifications

• Experience: 10 years experience. Experience in the financial sector preferred.

  Managed large & complex projects. Experienced with successful distributed delivery. 

• Banking Experience:. 2-4 years of experience.

• Domain Knowledge:   Experience in a startup / scale-up environment. 

• Methodology: Can handle fixed price and Time and Material. Focussed on fixed price. and kanban. Knows Agile / SCRUM. You optimize your work with AI.

• Tooling: Proficient in Jira, Google suite, Gemini and ideally familiar with Productive.

• Education: Bachelor's degree or higher.

• Language: Professional working proficiency in English and local language.

Competencies / skills

Result Driven  

• Responsible for delivering a complex project to a go-live. In most cases 2 or more lines of Business per customer. Fixed price or time and material.

• Leads project planning and execution, driving the team to achieve milestones.

• Accountable for project tracking, risk identification, and mitigation. 

• Accountable for setting up and maintaining project administration structure and templates.

• Ensures zero surprise delivery through risk mitigation plans.

• Ensures adherence to quality framework along with Engineering Manager(s).

• Responsible for maintaining SLAs under MS contracts.

• Ensures structured transition from validated requirements to engineering execution in the  project.

Hygiene

• Ensures all project documentation and tools are accurate and compliant with BB WoW.

• Prioritizes simple and effective communication over jargon.

• Always compliant on BB mandatory training / certification and drives compliance for the rest of the project team.

• Expert in manifesting hard skills in scope:  change, quality &  risk management.

• Excellent soft skills in active listening, objection handling, reasoning, debating, influencing, presenting, and teamwork with a perpetual commercial and financial savviness.

• Comfortable in manifesting consultant mindset (influence & persuasion, negotiation skills, confidence to push back when necessary).

• Capable of leveraging and contributing to BB Delivery Hub to hone BB WoW, PM techniques, and delivery framework and acts as a local champion. 

Stakeholder Management

• Manages operational communication with customer and Backbase team. 

• Defends project scope and decisions with clarity and honesty

• Capable of establishing good relationships inside Backbase with Sales, Tech and R&D.

• Comfortable in setting right expectations with the customer and pushing back as needed.

• Constantly strives to be a Trusted Advisor to the customer.

• Balances the attention towards the customer and keeping the teams productive. For the BA to get BSD’s signed off and for the EM to create working code with the squad.

Commercial  

• Responsible for closing SoW / CR and tracking usage

• Responsible for: project code setup, timesheets, invoicing, allocations, accounts receivable, team planning.

• Tracking & reporting on margin & revenue

Team  

• Capable of creating a well planned and prepared Setup with tension in scope.

• Able to keep the Sales team and R&D team involved and accountable.

• Enabling the BA to create BSD’s and take away any operational or planning items

• Enabling the EM to develop together with his team the required software. 

• Proactively manages team dynamics and conflict resolution.

• Capable of keeping the full team accountable for set deadlines, including the customer. 

• Able to manage various locations, while cognizant that not all can or need to travel for meetings. 

• Responsible for driving project tasks and subtasks lists with clear timelines and individual owners irrespective of seniority.

Product

• Responsible for attaining basic product knowledge and roadmap.

• Participating and collaborating in joint roadmap sessions with customers with an adopt mindset with a qualified view on local market, regulatory needs, competitive landscape of the customer.

• Responsible for identifying key BB product stakeholders across value streams to build a rapport and collaborative relationship on an ongoing basis.

• Capable of managing feature requests and Maints in close liaison with project team.

• Accountable for tracking delivery of Exceptional Commits (if any) from BB Product team and its impact on engagement timeline; 

Way of Working

• Accountable of giving comfort to the customer that the chosen approach will secure to reach the stated targets

• Accountable for adherence to processes / guidelines in Delivery Hub (BB WoW)..

• Accountable for developing, debating, and agreeing on an interaction model and a WoW in the context of the customer.

• Accountable for adhering to agreed WoW and keeping both BB and customer accountable; Immediate escalation to CS Leadership.

• Accountable for constantly communicating with the customer and documenting key decisions, deviations, and escalations in written format.

• Accountable for developing and agreeing with the customer for planned colocation to improve collaboration.

• Accountable for drafting, establishing and enforcing quality metrics with BB EM; Periodic publication of metrics to customers.