Principal Delivery Lead

Overview

This is a remote opportunity that can be hired in NC. The Principal Delivery Lead is accountable for the end-to-end technical delivery of the enterprise architecture platform portfolio: enterprise architecture governance, API and integration middleware, workflow automation, and robotics.

This role converts approved architecture decisions and platform roadmaps into production-grade, adopted capability on a predictable cadence, within enterprise change and risk controls. This is a delivery execution and engineering leadership role. Accountability is for what ships, whether it runs, and whether it is consumed, not for the financial, workforce, or commercial administration of the organization.

• Own the delivery plan, sequencing, and release calendar across all four platform domains.
• Drive execution from architecture intent through design, build, test, deployment, and stabilization.
• Establish and enforce definition-of-ready and definition-of-done standards for platform work.
• Manage delivery escalations, unblock technical impediments, and make sequencing calls when scope, dependency, and date pressures conflict.
• Maintain the integrated delivery view across the team
• Be the communication leader for the group and drive effective communications to customers, partners, and stakeholders
• Reduce technical debt deliberately: maintain a debt register with retirement plans tied to the delivery plan, not to an aspirational backlog.
• Run Operational Excellence and Pre-Change governance program across the teams
• Partner with operations and SRE functions on incident reduction, problem management, and post-incident engineering follow-through.
• Treat platform consumers as customers: drive API discoverability and self-service onboarding, developer documentation quality, and time-to-first-integration.
• Define and operate the intake and qualification path for workflow and robotics candidates, including technical feasibility assessment and automation-versus remediation judgment.
• Measure and report adoption and reuse, not just delivery completion.
• Serve as the delivery voice in enterprise architecture forums; test proposed decisions against implementation reality and surface where an architecture decision is undeliverable as written.
• Proactively manage stakeholder expectations and relationships
• Ensure delivered platform capability conforms to reference architecture, and document deviations formally as technical debt rather than by accretion.
• Provide feedback loops from delivery experience into roadmap and standards.
• Technical effort estimates and capacity requirements that inform planning
• Technical evaluation, integration design, engineering-level supplier engagement
• Drive skills development & Skill-mix requirements and technical role definition; day-to-day delivery direction
• Delivery status, release readiness, and platform health reporting
• Technical and delivery risk identification and remediation execution
• Technical communication to engineering and consuming teams
• Manage relationship with Business Risk and Controls team to effectively manage risk and control environment

Bachelor's Degree and 10 years of experience in Project Management OR High School Diploma or GED and 14 years of experience in Project Management

• 12+ years in technology delivery, with 5+ years leading delivery of shared or platform capabilities used by multiple consuming teams.
• Demonstrated hands-on depth in at least two of: API management and integration middleware (ESB, event streaming, iPaaS), workflow and BPM automation, RPA platforms.
• Track record delivering in a regulated environment with formal change management and auditable SDLC evidence requirements.
• Proven ability to manage multi-team, multi-quarter dependency chains without formal authority over all contributing teams.
• Credibility with technologists including architects and engineers
• Financial services experience, particularly in environments consolidating platforms following mergers or acquisitions.
• Familiarity with citizen-development governance models for workflow and robotics.

Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at