Programme Manager

Job Title:

Programme Manager - Northampton

We are seeking an experienced "Programme Manager" to lead a large-scale transformation, covering API gateways, payment/card message switching, routing, network controls, and security layers. This role is accountable for delivering a multi-year change portfolio aligned to bank-wide priorities such as platform modernisation, resilience uplift, risk reduction, cloud adoption, regulatory compliance, and legacy decommissioning. The Programme Manager will operate within a highly regulated banking environment and must demonstrate strong governance, stakeholder management, and delivery leadership across multiple technology, business, and risk teams.

The places that you work from day to day will vary according to your role, your needs, and those of the business; it will be a blend of Company offices, client sites, and your home; noting that you will be unable to work at home 100% of the time.

• Programme Leadership & Governance
• Define programme scope, roadmap, delivery approach, and success criteria aligned to bank strategy and Group CTO priorities.
• Establish programme governance:
  Steer Cos, Working Groups, Design Authority, RAID management, dependency tracking, and formal reporting.
• Ensure all programme activities comply with banking change governance, including SDLC standards, risk assessments, controls, and approval gates.
• Drive alignment with Enterprise Architecture, CISO, CIO Platform Teams, Payments Technology, and Operations

• Lead end to end delivery of the Transformation, including:
  • Migration of services from legacy gateway to target-state platform
  • Resilience uplift (active-active, DR, failover, observability)
  • Security enhancements (TLS/cipher updates, HSM integrations, authentication patterns)
  • Infrastructure automation, monitoring dashboards, and runbook updates
• Orchestrate cutovers, production readiness, go/no-go decisions, and hypercare.
• Ensure alignment with bank-wide change freeze, dependency calendars, and operational risk requirements.

• Ensure programme adherence to all applicable regulatory frameworks including:
  • PCI DSS, PRA/ECB technology resilience guidelines, ISO 27001, GDPR, SOC controls
• Own operational risk management:
  • Conduct RCSAs, impact assessments, control testing, and evidence traceability.
• Ensure compliance with Change Control (CAB/ECAB), segregated environments, access controls, and audit readiness.

• Engage senior stakeholders across Technology, Operations, Product, Risk, Cyber Security, and Business Units.
• Provide executive-level updates, decision papers, and status reporting.
• Manage delivery partners, vendors, and third-party service providers (SOWs, SLAs, performance oversight).

• Own programme budget, financial forecasting, and cost controls (Cap Ex/OpEx).
• Develop and track the programme benefits case for resilience, performance, and operational risk reduction.
• Ensure vendor commercial alignment with bank procurement and finance policies.

• Partner with engineering, network, SRE, cyber, and architecture teams to validate design decisions, performance metrics, and operational readiness.
• Enable Non-Functional Requirement (NFR) compliance: latency, throughput, capacity, availability, failover behaviour.
• Ensure observability and monitoring (metrics, logs, traces) are embedded before cutover.
• Drive TOM changes for operations, including support models, on-call, escalation, MI, and dashboards.

• Banking Domain: 10-15+ years in technology change delivery within a Tier 1 or Tier 2 bank, financial institution, payments provider, or regulated environment.
• Delivering Complex Programmes
  • Platform migrations
  • Resilience uplift programmes
  • Legacy decommissioning
• Experience leading cross bank, multi discipline deliveries with high operational risk.
• Regulatory & Risk Expertise
  • Strong knowledge of PCI DSS, encryption/HSM
• EBA/PRA operational resilience requirements
• Technology risk frameworks
• Controls, audit, and evidence governance
• Deep familiarity with CAB, change governance gates,…