Project Manager Testing (SC Cleared)

Cognizant; Greater London; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant in the United Kingdom is seeking a well-rounded Senior Project and Change Manager to lead tech and business change programmes.

You will drive business cases, plan delivery, manage stakeholders, and guide multi-disciplinary teams through complex transformations, ensuring benefits realisation and aligned governance.

Qualifications

• Senior experience in project and change management.
• Experience delivering large-scale services, products or platforms.
• Ability to lead multi-disciplinary delivery teams.
• Experience with Agile and Scrum approaches.
• Understanding of banking environments is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Lead business case development, aligning with senior stakeholders and project board.
• Ensure robust planning and delivery methodology, tracking and review.
• Manage stakeholder relationships to achieve buy-in and outcomes.
• Provide direction, coaching and development to the team.
• Build and lead a multi-disciplinary delivery team.
• Identify, prioritise, mitigate risks and keep senior stakeholders updated.
• Drive benefits realisation and monitor value delivery.
• Set success criteria, project controls and report progress.
• Manage budget, costs and expenditure against delivery and benefits.
• Drive delivery, remove blockers and escalate where needed.
• Own cross-departmental dependencies and align with project environment.
• Drive roadmap delivery within time, quality and cost constraints.

Skills

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Communication

Agile methodologies

Change management

Risk management

Strategic planning

Education

Prince2 / MSP / APMP / PMP

Job description

We are looking for well rounded PM's for Tech and Business Change Projects and Progammes

Should have experience of Testing Lifecycle to support BDD framework of requirement definitions and creating Testing suites for technology team to consume and build Continuous Integration and Continuous Testing.

Responsibilities include:

Business Case – Lead the development of the Business Case, alignment with senior stakeholders and agreement through the Project Board.

Planning – Ensure robust planning and appropriate delivery methodology, tracking and review.

Communications and Stakeholder Management – Lead, manage and direct effective stakeholder relationships across multiple groups to achieve buy-in to project objectives and delivery of outcomes.

Guidance - Provide direction, coaching and development to the team

Resource Management - Build and maintain a strong delivery-focused project team. Provide leadership and direct a multi-disciplinary team to deliver successfully.

Risk & Issues – Accountable for ensuring risks and issues are identified, prioritised, assessed and mitigated. Ensure senior stakeholders are briefed, updated and where appropriate, enrolled in the management and control of key risks. Identify and engage specialists as appropriate.

Benefits Realisation - Provide leadership in monitoring benefit delivery and to maximise benefits from the project.

Project Performance, Controls and Reporting - Responsible for identifying success criteria, set project controls and be accountable for performance. Monitor and control progress, engage fully with assurance and respond to recommendations. Support accurate, efficient and timely reporting. Manage the project’s budget, monitoring expenditure and costs against delivery and realised benefits as the project progresses

Leadership & Vision – Create a motivational environment in which projects can succeed – working effectively, collaboratively and managing dependencies.

Dependency Management - Own cross departmental and key supplier dependencies, ensure dependencies are re-aligned to reflect changes in the project's environment.

Driving delivery - Ensure agreed project outcomes defined within the business case are met, within time, quality and cost constraints. Actively remove blockers, resolve issues and escalat where appropriate.

Role Requirements

• Previous experience in Senior Project and Change Management. Experience of delivering significant enhancements to or introducing new services, products and platforms and managing the impacts on people, processes, tools and culture.
• Previous experience of managing senior stakeholders.
• Excellent leadership, communication and influencing skills,
• Demonstrable experience of a range of methodologies including Agile, and working in fast-paced and demanding environments,
• Solid understanding of data software development principles, lifecycle models and methodologies within Agile and Scrum,
• Ability to lead the construction of the project plan to deliver the outcomes of the roadmap, development plan and roll out & implementation of the roadmap,
• Proven experience converting product roadmaps into work packages,
• Understanding of business architecture and implementation, with the knowledge to challenge these when necessary,
• Ability to use standardized operational processes to build scale and reduce cost/operational risk,
• Driven and proactive work approach; able to work on own initiative and handle change and ambiguity.
• Understanding of Banking environments
• A recognised project or programme management qualification e.g. Prince 2, MSP, APMP or PMP