Project Manager - Financial Services (Capital Markets)

Role Summary

We are seeking a highly experienced and dedicated Project Manager with a strong background in Financial Services, specifically within Capital Markets. This role demands an individual who embodies an ownership mentality, possesses structured thinking, and has a clear bias for clarity. The successful candidate will be accountable for driving project outcomes, navigating complex system boundaries, and ensuring alignment across various stakeholders and engineering teams. This is a critical role for individuals who thrive on enabling engineering while upholding strategic project goals and boundaries.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Planning & Execution:
  • Translate strategic goals into actionable project plans, performing effective decomposition of complex initiatives.
  • Proactively identify, assess, and mitigate project risks throughout the lifecycle.
  • Monitor project progress diligently, identifying and addressing slippage early to ensure timely delivery.
• Stakeholder & Boundary Management:
  • Act as a primary interface between business stakeholders and engineering teams, aligning competing priorities and fostering collaboration.
  • Clearly define project scope, system boundaries (functional and architectural), and ownership to prevent scope creep and misalignment.
  • Manage stakeholder requests by triaging them (in-scope, adjacent, out-of-scope), routing appropriately, coordinating cross-team efforts, or pushing back when necessary.
  • Surface hidden scope expansions and dependencies, ensuring that engineering decisions align with overall project scope and business objectives.
• Leadership & Communication:
  • Maintain composure and provide clear direction under pressure, especially when addressing issues.
  • Facilitate timely decision-making, clearly articulating trade-offs and ensuring all parties understand the rationale.
  • Exhibit relentless follow-through on all tasks and commitments, ensuring commitments are met.
  • Proactively communicate project status, challenges, and successes to all relevant stakeholders, ensuring "no surprises."
  • Manage communication effectively both up (to leadership) and down (to team members).
• Accountability & Drive:
  • Drive accountability across the project team, even without direct authority, ensuring all contributors understand their roles and responsibilities.
  • Continuously reprioritize tasks and objectives based on evolving realities and business needs.
  • Challenge the "why" behind engineering solutions to ensure they align with business goals and project boundaries, while respecting engineering's ownership of the "how."

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Domain Expertise (MUST-HAVE):
  • Extensive experience (8+ years) in Financial Services, with deep domain knowledge in Capital Markets.
  • Understanding of trading lifecycle, market data, regulatory requirements, and financial instruments.
• Core Attributes:
  • Ownership Mentality: Demonstrates full accountability for project outcomes, not just task completion.
  • Structured Thinking: Ability to break down complex problems into manageable, logical parts.
  • Bias for Clarity: Exceptional ability to define scope, roles, and success criteria unambiguously.
  • Calm under pressure, capable of maintaining composure and effectiveness during critical issues.
  • Pragmatic approach, balancing ideal solutions with achievable outcomes.
• Core Skills (MUST-HAVE - Top 3):
  • Planning and Decomposition: Proven ability to convert strategic goals into detailed, actionable project plans.
  • Stakeholder Management: Expert in aligning diverse and often competing priorities among various stakeholders.
  • Risk Management: Proactive and effective identification, assessment, and mitigation of project risks.
• Other Key Skills:
  • Excellent Communication: Clear, structured, and audience-specific communication skills (written and verbal).
  • Decision Facilitation: Skilled in driving timely decisions with clear articulation of trade-offs.
  • Execution Tracking: Strong ability to monitor progress and detect early signs of slippage.
• Key Behaviors:
  • Relentless follow-through on tasks and commitments.
  • Proactive communication with a "no surprises" philosophy.
  • A natural ability to force alignment across disparate stakeholder groups.
  • Effective at managing expectations and communications with both superiors and direct reports/team members.
  • Adept at driving accountability within a team, even without formal authority.
  • Capable of continuous reprioritization based on dynamic project realities.