Portfolio Lead

Apex Group Ltd (India Branch); Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 4,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Apex Group Ltd (India Branch) is seeking a Portfolio Lead to drive technology and business change across a defined product portfolio. You will plan epics, manage delivery frameworks, and coordinate across Operations, Technology and Product to align with strategic and regulatory goals.

The role reports to the Global Head of Change and focuses on portfolio health, risk management, and governance, ensuring value delivery through disciplined planning and decision-making.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; Advanced degree in IT or MBA preferred.
• 10+ years of project management experience in a large multi-unit global organization.
• Experience in financial services is advantageous.
• Proven expertise in project management methodologies and tools.
• Strong leadership, negotiation, and team-building skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Oversee day-to-day matrix management of project teams to deliver portfolio plans.
• Champion Agile/Waterfall delivery methodologies and Lean Portfolio Management.
• Ensure epic documentation, milestone tracking and risk/issues are logged and managed.
• Provide portfolio performance metrics in collaboration with PMO and stakeholders.
• Manage portfolio budgets including headcount and epic costs, within approved budgets.
• Lead quarterly planning increments and upstream portfolio activities with Tech and Product Leads.
• Coordinate with operations and vendors to ensure on-time, budget-compliant delivery.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Negotiation

Stakeholder management

Risk management

Education

Bachelor's degree

MBA

Tools

MS Office

Azure DevOps

Job description

The Apex Group is a global financial services provider with 10,000 staff across 50+ offices globally. We look to recruit bright, articulate and numerate employees who are not afraid of a challenge and are prepared to work hard and love what they do. Every employee plays a part in making Apex who we are today and the more that we grow, the more important that becomes. Whatever your career path or specialism Apex provides a global platform to allow you to thrive.

As APEX FUND SERVICES is expanding, we are opening an exciting new opportunity. We are currently looking for suitable, motivated and team-oriented professional for the position of Portfolio Lead.

Purpose of the Role:

The role of the Portfolio Lead is accountable for technology and business change delivery across a defined portfolio for a collection of Products globally.

The role leads the planning and scheduling of epics, technology and business change management, project metrics production and analysis within the Portfolio working with colleagues across Operations, Technology and Product to prioritorise delivery in line with strategic, regulatory and growth objectives.

The position reports into the Global Head of Change and helps plan annual portfolios based on business needs, manage portfolio health, risks, dependencies, and compliance, and support the development and advocacy of agile and waterfall delivery frameworks, contributes to the development of standard project/program delivery methodologies to be used across all change delivery.

Key Responsibilities:

• Day-to-day matrix management of a team of project/programme managers and business change managers, QAs & BAs to realise delivery in line with portfolio plans– working with Practice Management to support the alignment of team capacity and capability in line with Portfolio delivery needs.
• Champion contextualized (Agile/Waterfall) delivery methodology supporting the ongoing improvement in ways of working and Lean Portfolio Management across the team
• Accountability for PM teams’ ongoing deliverables – providing technical expertise, ensuring use of PPM tooling and epic documentation is in place, reviewing the quality of plans and data, ensuring milestone dates are met whilst ensuring changes are captured, risks and issues are logged.
• Accountable for Portfolio delivery performance – working with PMO using PPM tooling to provide metrics on the teams' delivery performance across the epics.
• Accountable for Portfolio budgets – managing people cost and epic cost, ensuring costs are in line with agreed budgets, working through approval processes for new epics
• Lead on upstream Portfolio activity working in collaboration with Technology and Product Leads to prioritorise, review and refine new epics ahead of implementation
• Lead on quarterly Planning Increments for the Portfolio, aligning key stakeholders, committed deliverables & resources required continuously reviewing and refining processes to improve efficiency & effectiveness of planning and delivery cycles
• Oversee daily portfolio and work stream plans. Identify and manage risks, issues, assumptions, and dependencies. Address project variances to maintain baseline.
• Set up plan review/status meetings with internal teams and third parties presenting summary reports of portfolio performance to senior management as required
• Maintain and ensure quality of planning documentation to demonstrably achieve planning quality gates criteria
• Communicate efficiently with senior stakeholders.
• Collaborate with Practice Management, Technology, Product and Operational teams to address project planning/delivery issues.
• Serve as escalation point for Project Managers where project delivery is out of tolerance
• Assist Project Managers in managing vendors for on-time, budget-compliant delivery.

Experience required:

• Bachelor's degree required; Advance degree in IT related field or MBA preferred.
• 10+ Years Project Management experience in a large multi-unit global organization required, ideally in complex IS and business environments.
• Experience working on projects in the financial services industry would be an advantage;
• Must possess extensive knowledge and expertise in the use of Project Management methodologies and tools.
• Passion for leading teams and implementing change.
• Demonstrated leadership skills. Strong negotiation and team-building skills with the ability to create consensus around decisions and mitigate conflicts among different teams.
• Strong communication skills required at all levels. Must be able to interact with senior leadership. Excellent command of verbal and written communication (English). Effective presentation style for all levels of stakeholders.
• Strong problem solving, decision making, issue analysis and resolution skills.
• Highly organized and demonstrable ability to manage competing priorities with internal clients.
• Ability to work well in a fast paced multicultural global work environment.
• Proficient in MS Office products including Azure Dev Ops