Sr. Director, PDLC Governance

Early Warning; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Early Warning seeks an Enterprise Product Owner to drive the Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) strategy and governance across product, technology, risk, compliance, internal audit, and executive stakeholders. The role ensures scalable delivery capabilities, audit-readiness, and alignment with regulatory expectations.

In this hybrid position, you will oversee prioritized programs, embed risk requirements into lifecycle execution, and partner with executive teams to enable disciplined

Responsibilities

• Service Excellence and governance: Provides executive governance and communications to ensure effective resource utilization, prioritization, and lifecycle decision-making. Owns and maintains PDLC standards, procedures, controls, operating models, governance forums, and operational rhythms; continuously evaluates processes and methodologies to improve consistent execution.
• Operational Effectiveness: Establishes and monitors OKRs, KPIs, lifecycle health measures, control effectiveness, risks, issues, and remediation activity. Uses insights to prioritize corrective actions, roadmap improvements, and sustainable resolution of execution or control gaps.
• Strategic Partner: Manages executive communication and escalations across the organization related to PDLC execution and governance. Serves as a senior escalation point for lifecycle interpretation, stage-gate decisions, exceptions, and deviations within delegated authority, and aligns stakeholders across first-, second-, and third-line functions.
• Change

Job description

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle, Paze, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.
Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.
Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

Enable strategic direction by serving as the enterprise product owner for the Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) framework. The role is responsible PDLC strategy, governance, standards, adoption, and ongoing maturity to enable consistent, disciplined execution of company initiatives across product, technology, and business teams. This role oversees prioritized programs and governance activities, embeds risk and control requirements into lifecycle execution, and partners with Product, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit, and executive stakeholders to ensure delivery capabilities are scalable, effective, audit-ready, and aligned with business and regulatory expectations.

Essential Functions

• Service Excellence and governance: Provides executive governance and communications to ensure effective resource utilization, prioritization, and lifecycle decision-making. Owns and maintains PDLC standards, procedures, controls, operating models, governance forums, and operational rhythms; continuously evaluates processes and methodologies to improve consistent execution.
• Operational Effectiveness: Establishes and monitors OKRs, KPIs, lifecycle health measures, control effectiveness, risks, issues, and remediation activity. Uses insights to prioritize corrective actions, roadmap improvements, and sustainable resolution of execution or control gaps.
• Strategic Partner: Manages executive communication and escalations across the organization related to PDLC execution and governance. Serves as a senior escalation point for lifecycle interpretation, stage-gate decisions, exceptions, and deviations within delegated authority, and aligns stakeholders across first-, second-, and third-line functions.
• Change