Senior Project Manager

Apex Systems; Chester; On-site; GBP 75,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Apex Systems is seeking a Senior Project Manager to lead payments and technology delivery initiatives. You will coordinate across multiple delivery teams, drive governance, manage risks and dependencies, and ensure alignment with business objectives and enterprise change management standards.

The role requires strong leadership, stakeholder engagement, and a delivery-focused mindset. The successful candidate will work with business and technology leaders to ensure timely execution of complex

Qualifications

• Experience delivering complex technology and payments programmes.
• Strong governance, risk management, and reporting capabilities.
• Ability to coordinate across business, technology, and operations teams.
• Proven track record with cross-stakeholder alignment and decision governance.

Responsibilities

• Lead planning, coordination and execution of complex initiatives with scope, timelines and milestones.
• Establish and maintain programme governance with status reporting and steering forums.
• Consolidate updates from delivery teams and provide clear reporting to leadership.
• Identify delivery risks and drive mitigation, escalation, and resolution.
• Maintain oversight of schedules, dependencies and critical paths.

Skills

Delivery leadership

Stakeholder management

Governance and reporting

Risk management

Programme coordination

Job description

Senior Project Manager – Payments & Technology Delivery

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Senior Project Manager to lead and coordinate complex technology and payments-related initiatives across multiple stakeholders and delivery teams. The successful candidate will be responsible for driving execution, maintaining strong governance, managing risks and dependencies, and ensuring that programme deliverables remain aligned with business objectives, stakeholder expectations, and enterprise change management standards.

The role requires a strong delivery mindset, excellent stakeholder and leadership management skills, and the ability to operate effectively across business, technology, architecture, operations, and programme governance functions.

Key Responsibilities

Project Delivery & Governance

• * Lead the planning, coordination, and execution of complex project and strategic initiatives, ensuring delivery against agreed scope, requirements, timelines, and milestones.
• * Establish and maintain effective programme governance, including regular status reporting, governance forums, steering committees, and leadership updates.
• * Gather, consolidate, and facilitate status updates from delivery teams and workstreams and provide clear, concise reporting to stakeholders and senior leadership.
• * Provide transparent reporting on delivery progress, key milestones, risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and schedule impacts.
• * Proactively identify delivery risks and issues and drive appropriate mitigation, escalation, and resolution.
• * Maintain strong oversight of programme schedules, dependencies, critical paths, and interrelated deliverables.
• * Ensure that programme execution remains aligned with agreed business and technology deliverable requirements.

Stakeholder & Sponsor Management

• * Work closely with programme sponsors, business stakeholders, technology leaders, product owners, architects, and delivery teams to ensure alignment throughout the programme lifecycle.
• * Partner with sponsors and stakeholders to define, clarify, and validate deliverable requirements and expected outcomes.
• * Ensure execution remains aligned with agreed requirements and proactively address changes, gaps, or conflicting priorities.
• * Facilitate effective decision-making across stakeholder groups and ensure key decisions, actions, and accountabilities are clearly documented and tracked.
• * Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders and provide appropriate escalation where delivery, scope, risk, or schedule requires leadership intervention.
• * Ensure project deliverables and requirements comply with established enterprise change management, governance, risk, and control standards.
• * Coordinate required governance and control activities across the programme lifecycle.
• * Ensure appropriate documentation, approvals, controls, and evidence are maintained for key programme deliverables.
• * Work with relevant governance and control functions to identify and address compliance or delivery gaps.

Resource & Delivery Planning

• * Support resource planning and capacity management across programme workstreams to ensure appropriate skills and capacity are available for successful execution.
• * Work with delivery managers and technology leads to identify resource constraints, skills gaps, and potential delivery bottlenecks.
• * Support prioritisation and allocation of resources based on programme objectives, critical milestones, and business priorities.
• * Monitor delivery capacity and proactively highlight resource-related risks to programme leadership.

Desired Qualifications

Payments Domain Experience

• * Strong understanding of the payments industry, payment processing, payment infrastructure, and modern payment ecosystems.
• * Experience working on cross-border payments and/or real-time payments is highly desirable.
• * Experience with ISO 20022 and related payment messaging standards.
• * Familiarity with hybrid postal address / postal address data requirements within payment processing and ISO 20022 implementations.
• * Experience working on payment transformation, payment modernisation, or payment infrastructure programmes.
• * Understanding of the regulatory, operational, and technology considerations associated with cross-border and real-time payments.