Project Manager

Airtel Africa; Haryana; On-site; INR 1,500,000 - 2,100,000; Full time

Job summary

The Airtel Money Project Manager at Airtel Africa will own and deliver end-to-end business, technical and integration projects, engaging with engineering teams and senior leadership across borders. You will drive scope, plans, milestones, and risk management, ensure go-live readiness, and coordinate with partners and vendors to secure timely delivery and stabilisation post-launch.

Strong communication, assertive leadership and fintech/telecom project experience are preferred to navigate complex

Qualifications

• Extensive experience managing technology integration projects across engineering and business stakeholders.
• Ability to drive delivery with limited authority and manage cross-team dependencies.
• Experience engaging with CXOs and senior leadership when required.
• Knowledge of APIs, web services, security and deployment environments.

Responsibilities

• Own projects from initiation through go-live and post-production stabilization.
• Establish scope, plan, milestones, governance, and RAID logs.
• Drive teams to meet timelines and quality standards.
• Escalate risks early and develop recovery plans.
• Ensure go-live readiness and post go-live issue tracking.
• Maintain governance, status updates, and decision logs.

Skills

End-to-end PM

Cross-functional leadership

APIs & integration

Tech stack: REST/SOAP

Technical curiosity

API testing

Ownership mindset

Executive communication

PM tools

Agile/SAFe knowledge

Education

BE/BTech / MCA / MTech

PMP/PRINCE2

Tools

MS Project

Jira

Confluence

Excel

PowerPoint

Job description

Role Purpose

The Airtel Money Project Manager will 'own and drive' the end-to-end delivery of business, technology and integration projects across Airtel Money.

This is not a project tracking or coordination only role. The Project Manager is expected to have sufficient technical understanding to engage confidently with engineering teams, identify gaps, challenge plans and estimates, facilitate technical problem solving and drive stakeholders towards timely decisions and delivery.

The role requires a highly assertive and outcome-oriented individual who can work across teams without direct authority.

The Project Manager must be comfortable engaging and escalating to senior leadership, including CXOs, whenever intervention or a decision is required to protect the project outcome.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End Delivery Ownership

• Own projects from initiation through requirements, solutioning, development, integration, SIT, UAT, security assessment, operational readiness, go live and post production stabilization.
• Establish a clear project scope, delivery plan, milestones, success criteria, governance structure, RACI and stakeholder accountability.
• Drive all participating teams to deliver their commitments within the agreed timelines and quality standards.
• Ensure that project plans are realistic, dependency linked and supported by clear owners and committed dates.
• Identify slippages and delivery risks early, rather than waiting for milestones to be missed.
• Develop and drive recovery plans for delayed or at-risk projects.
• Take ownership of overall delivery outcomes, including areas dependent on other Airtel teams, OpCos, banks, partners or vendors.
• Drive go-live readiness and ensure all business, technical, security and operational prerequisites are completed before launch.
• Track post‑go‑live issues through stabilization and formal closure.

Technical Delivery Leadership

• Understand the proposed solution, integration flows, technical dependencies and implementation approach.
• Engage confidently with engineering, architecture, testing, security, operations and partner technology teams.
• Drive technical discussions relating to APIs, web services, middleware, databases, application platforms, infrastructure and security.
• Review technical plans, interface specifications, testing coverage and deployment dependencies with the relevant teams.
• Challenge engineering teams constructively on feasibility, estimates, timelines, quality, risks and unresolved dependencies.
• Facilitate troubleshooting of API, integration, environment and deployment issues, ensuring that the right technical teams collaborate until resolution.
• Be capable of interpreting API responses, logs, error messages, XML/JSON payloads and basic database or Unix/Linux outputs.

Driving Stakeholders and Decisions

• Act as the single delivery focal point for assigned projects.
• Establish clear ownership and accountability across teams.
• Follow through assertively on commitments and challenge missed timelines, unclear ownership or incomplete deliverables.
• Identify decisions required and ensure that they are taken at the appropriate level without avoidable delay.
• Escalate confidently and constructively to senior management, including CXOs, when decisions, prioritisation or intervention are required.
• Present escalations with a clear articulation of the issue, business impact, options, recommendation, owner and decision required.
• Resolve conflicts across teams while keeping the overall project objective and Airtel’s interests at the centre.
• Build strong working relationships without compromising delivery accountability.

Risk and Dependency Management

• Proactively identify and manage risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies.
• Maintain an accurate RAID log with clear impact, mitigation, ownership and closure dates.
• Provide early-warning communication where timelines, scope, quality or business outcomes are at risk.
• Anticipate cross-team, cross-platform and partner dependencies and incorporate them into the project plan.
• Drive mitigation and contingency actions instead of limiting the role to risk reporting.
• Escalate unresolved risks before they become delivery failures.

Governance and Communication

• Establish effective working level and management level governance for every project.
• Maintain accurate project plans, schedules, RACI, RAID logs, decision logs and action trackers.
• Ensure that project management tools reflect the correct and current status of each project.
• Provide concise, factual and transparent status updates, without masking delivery risks or delays.
• Prepare and present project status, risks, recovery plans and decisions required to senior management.
• Adapt communication according to the audience, from technical teams to business leaders and CXOs.

Continuous Improvement

• Manage multiple projects simultaneously and effectively prioritise competing demands.
• Identify recurring delivery bottlenecks and recommend improvements to processes, governance and ways of working.
• Promote disciplined project-management practices across internal teams and external partners.
• Share learning and reusable practices across projects.

Required Skills and Competencies

• Strong end to end technology project management experience.
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross functional teams without direct authority.
• Strong technical understanding of APIs, web services, application platforms and system integrations.
• Working knowledge of REST, SOAP, XML, JSON, Unix/Linux, databases, Java-based applications, Kubernetes and information security.
• Ability to understand technical discussions, ask the right questions and challenge engineering teams constructively.
• Experience in testing, troubleshooting and debugging APIs and integration issues.
• Strong ownership mindset with a bias towards action and resolution.
• Assertive communication and the ability to hold stakeholders accountable.
• Confidence and executive presence to engage with senior management and CXOs.
• Ability to escalation constructively, supported by facts, impact assessment and recommended actions.
• Strong problem solving, negotiation and conflict-resolution skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Ability to remain effective under pressure and during short delivery timelines.
• Strong skills in MS Project, Jira, Confluence, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Ability to work across diverse cultures, countries and time zones.
• Willingness to support critical deployments outside normal business hours and travel at short notice.
• Mobile money, payments, fintech, banking or telecommunications experience is preferred.
• French language capability would be an advantage.
• Agile or SAFe knowledge would be an advantage.

Educational Qualifications and Experience

• BE/BTech, MCA, MTech or an equivalent technology-related qualification.
• A recognised project-management certification such as PMP, PRINCE2 or an equivalent qualification is preferred.
• 6–10 years of overall experience, including at least 4 years managing technology integration projects.
• Experience delivering projects involving engineering teams, business stakeholders, external partners and technology vendors.
• Experience in mobile money, digital payments, banking, fintech or telecommunications would be strongly preferred.

What Success Looks Like

• Projects are delivered within committed scope, timelines and quality standards.
• Risks and dependencies are identified and acted upon before they cause delays.
• Teams have clear ownership, commitments and accountability.
• Technical issues are understood and driven to resolution quickly.
• Decisions and escalations are raised at the right level and at the right time.
• Senior stakeholders receive accurate information, clear options and actionable recommendations.
• Projects go live with appropriate business, technical, security and operational readiness.
• The Project Manager is recognised as the end‑to‑end delivery owner—not merely the custodian of the project plan.