Program Manager – Eagle

Cognizant; Riyad Al Khabra; On-site; SAR 350,000 - 650,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant in Saudi Arabia seeks a Program Manager to act as the central coordinating and governance lead across Eagle Accounting and Eagle Performance workstreams. You will report to the Practice Director, maintain risk visibility, and foster relationships with senior client and internal stakeholders.

You will drive cross-functional alignment, ensure decisions and actions are tracked, and deliver timely progress reporting to leadership while managing RAID across multiple teams in a

Qualifications

• Significant experience managing large, complex technology implementation programs in financial services, investment management, or banking.
• Proven track record in governance, project controls, risk/issue management, dependency management, and executive reporting.
• Strong experience managing senior client stakeholders in complex delivery environments.
• Ability to operate independently and proactively in a client-facing on-site role.
• Excellent executive communication, facilitation, negotiation, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Experience coordinating geographically distributed delivery teams and managing cross-workstream dependencies.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain a robust governance framework across Eagle Accounting and Eagle Performance workstreams.
• Coordinate program-level planning, milestones, dependencies, deliverables, and governance forums.
• Ensure ownership, accountability, and follow-through across all program actions.
• Maintain RAID (risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies) management.
• Identify and drive preventive or corrective actions to protect milestones.
• Track delivery against scope, schedule, and quality expectations.
• Facilitate governance meetings, steering committees, and reviews.
• Document decisions, actions, escalations, and dependencies to closure.

Skills

Program management

Governance

Stakeholder mgmt

Risk management

Executive communication

Cross-functional leadership

Job description

Job Summary:

• The Program Manager will act as the central point of coordination and governance across the program, ensuring strong execution discipline, proactive management of risks and issues, effective stakeholder engagement, transparent reporting, and alignment between the client and delivery teams.

  The successful candidate will report to the Practice Director and will be expected to provide early visibility of emerging risks, actively drive resolution of cross-functional issues, and maintain strong relationships with senior client and internal stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Program Governance & Delivery Oversight

• Establish and maintain a robust governance framework across the Eagle Accounting and Eagle Performance workstreams.
• Coordinate program-level planning, milestones, dependencies, deliverables, and governance forums.
• Ensure clear ownership, accountability, and follow-through across all program actions.
• Maintain program-level RAID management covering risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies.
• Proactively identify potential delivery challenges and drive preventive or corrective actions before they impact key milestones.
• Track delivery commitments against agreed scope, schedule, and quality expectations.
• Facilitate regular program governance meetings, steering committees, delivery reviews, and management checkpoints.
• Ensure decisions, actions, escalations, and dependencies are documented and actively managed to closure.

Client & Stakeholder Management

• Act as a senior day-to-day interface between the Organization and the Client for overall program governance.
• Build trusted working relationships with senior business, operations, technology, and transformation stakeholders.
• Coordinate closely with the Client's IT teams, including stakeholders located in Jeddah.
• Manage stakeholder expectations and ensure timely communication of progress, risks, decisions, and required interventions.
• Navigate complex stakeholder environments and facilitate resolution where priorities, dependencies, or expectations differ.
• Escalate material risks or decisions to the Practice Director with clear context, impact assessment, and recommended actions.
• Issue, Risk & Dependency Management
• Maintain active oversight of program risks, issues, and cross-workstream dependencies.
• Drive structured root-cause analysis and resolution of critical delivery issues.
• Ensure appropriate owners and target dates are assigned and tracked for all material actions.
• Identify trends or recurring delivery concerns and recommend structural interventions where required.
• Maintain strong escalation discipline while avoiding unnecessary escalation of issues that can be resolved within the delivery organization.

Reporting & Executive Communication

• Prepare concise and accurate weekly and monthly program reporting for leadership.
• Provide clear visibility of overall program status, milestone achievement, delivery risks, key decisions, dependencies, and management attention areas.
• Develop executive-level materials for steering committees and senior stakeholder meetings.
• Ensure reporting reflects the true health of the program and provides forward-looking insight rather than purely retrospective status updates.
• Provide the Practice Director with regular updates and immediate visibility of matters requiring senior management intervention.
• Cross-functional Coordination
• Coordinate across Professional Services, product, engineering, support, infrastructure, and other relevant teams.
• Work closely with Eagle Accounting and Eagle Performance functional and technical leads to ensure alignment across workstreams.
• Manage interdependencies between implementation teams, client technology teams, third-party providers, and other related initiatives.
• Support resource planning and highlight potential capacity or capability constraints.
• Ensure effective transition between project phases including design, build, testing, implementation, go-live, stabilization, and handover.

Required Experience & Skills

• Significant experience managing large and complex technology implementation programs within financial services, investment management, asset management, banking, or capital markets.
• Demonstrated experience in program governance, project controls, risk and issue management, dependency management, and executive reporting.
• Strong track record of managing senior client stakeholders in complex delivery environments.
• Ability to operate independently and proactively in a client-facing on-site role.
• Strong executive communication, facilitation, negotiation, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Experience coordinating geographically distributed and cross-functional delivery teams.
• Demonstrated ability to identify emerging delivery risks early and drive issues through to resolution.
• Strong understanding of structured implementation methodologies and enterprise technology delivery lifecycle.
• Ability to operate effectively in environments involving multiple business, operations, technology, vendor, and management stakeholders.

Preferred Experience

• Experience within investment management, asset servicing, investment accounting, performance measurement, or portfolio management.
• Prior experience with Eagle solutions, particularly Eagle Accounting and/or Eagle Performance, would be highly advantageous.
• Understanding of investment data, accounting, performance measurement, portfolio structures, securities, and related operational processes.
• Experience delivering major programs in Saudi Arabia or the broader GCC region.
• Familiarity with operating within large financial institutions where business and technology responsibilities span multiple entities or locations.

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