Senior Program Manager

Department: Professional Services

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Wilmington, Virginia, USA, Remote

Your day to day: Senior Programme Manager

• Own end-to-end delivery of Napiers largest enterprise programs, including Tier 1 National and European bank engagements 
• Establish and run program governance: steering committees, executive status reviews, RAID discipline, decision logs 
• Define and defend the acceptance criteria for go-live and any regulatory or contractual milestone 
• Coordinate delivery across Napiers Professional Services, Product, Engineering, Platform, Support, and Customer Success functions 

• Act as the single senior Napier delivery contact with the clients program director, delivery leads, and executive sponsors 
• Chair steering committees and executive status forums with authority and credibility 
• Prevent client escalations bypassing program governance 
• Represent Napier at client executive escalations, industry regulator interactions where relevant, and third-party (hyperscaler, SI) governance 

• Own program P&L, forecast, and margin 
• Run formal change control against every scope movement, defect classification, and delivery obligation 
• Defend Napier against uncapped commitments, one-sided release triggers, and unbounded acceptance criteria 
• Hold the defect versus change request line: no product commitment leaves Napier without your sign-off 
• Escalate commercial and contractual risk to the CCO before it becomes a client-facing position 

• Maintain the end-to-end program plan, dependency map, and critical path 
• Own the risk register and drive mitigations with named accountable owners 
• Establish and maintain go/no-go readiness assessment against agreed criteria 
• Drive continuous improvement in Napiers delivery methodology from evidence in the field 

• Manage the operational side of any escrow, source-code deposit, or equivalent regulatory instrument on your programs, working with Napier Legal, Engineering, and the third-party agent 
• Manage client expectations on trigger events, deposit content, and verification cycles 

• Ensure customers achieve successful implementation, adoption, and business value realisation 
• Manage a clean transition from delivery into Customer Success and Support with complete documentation and no orphaned commitments 

Do you have what it takes:

• 12+ years leading large-scale enterprise software delivery programs, with at least 5 years at senior program director or equivalent level 
• Direct financial crime compliance domain experience: AML, KYC, Transaction Monitoring, Sanctions Screening, or Case Management platforms. Not adjacent, not learned on the job during a stint - deep and current 
• Delivered at least one enterprise implementation into a Tier 1 or systemic bank in the UK, EU, or US, chairing steering committees at C-1 level 
• Proven turnaround experience: taken over a live enterprise program mid-flight, restored client confidence, re-baselined credibly, and landed a successful outcome 
• Cloud-based enterprise SaaS platform delivery experience, ideally including hyperscaler-hosted environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP) 
• Multi-vendor program experience across client, primary vendor, hyperscaler, and system integrator 
• Strong commercial and contractual instincts: has run defensive change control, held scope, defended margin, and defeated attempts to reclassify enhancements as defects 
• Experience of programs with regulatory or contractual hard deadlines (go/no-go gates, DORA, PRA/FCA supervisory dates, or equivalent) 
• Presence and credibility at C-1 and C-suite client levels 

• Experience of escrow, source-code deposit, or equivalent third-party regulatory instruments in a live client engagement 
• Experience across multiple geographic regions (EMEA, Americas, APAC) 
• Program management certifications (MSP, PgMP, PMP, Prince2) - useful, but not a substitute for the experience above 
• Experience in Private Equity-backed software companies operating to a defined value creation plan