Senior Program Manager

Title: Senior Program Manager

 Contract- 12-15 Months

Location:  US Remote

Client site — Island of Aruba (Initial 3-month full-time stay in Aruba, followed by 2 weeks per month traveling to the client''s site thereafter.)

Travel and Accommodation Expenses Covered

POSITION OVERVIEW

Sutherland is seeking a Senior Program Manager to join its Banking Transformation Practice. The successful candidate will assume end-to-end delivery responsibility for complex, multi-year banking and financial services transformation engagements, leading full-ecosystem modernization initiatives that typically encompass core banking, digital channels, card management, compliance, and payment infrastructure across multi-vendor SaaS environments.

The Senior Program Manager will represent Sutherland''s delivery leadership within client environments, establishing trusted advisory relationships with client executives, vendor program leads, and regulatory stakeholders. The role requires an individual of considerable experience in banking transformation, with the professional maturity to navigate complex stakeholder environments and the discipline to maintain delivery rigor across extended program timelines.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Assume overall responsibility for program delivery from initiation through post-go-live stabilization, managing program timelines, milestones, and deliverables against agreed commercial and regulatory commitments.
• Maintain an integrated program plan across concurrent workstreams — typically spanning core banking, digital channels, card management, compliance, payments, middleware architecture, and data migration — ensuring cross-vendor dependencies are actively identified and resolved.
• Manage program governance including risk and issue tracking, change control, executive reporting, RAID log maintenance, and milestone readiness reviews with client and regulatory stakeholders.
• Facilitate coordination across external vendor partners and internal Sutherland workstream leads, promoting alignment of plans, resolution of cross-party dependencies, and continuity of delivery momentum.
• Collaborate with the Enterprise Architect and Business Analyst / Product Owner to ensure that technical decisions are appropriately sequenced within the program schedule and remain commercially viable.
• Lead data migration planning across multiple iterative cycles in close collaboration with legacy system subject matter experts and target platform teams.
• Oversee budget tracking, resource forecasting, and commercial reporting in accordance with the agreed engagement model.
• Represent program status and progress to client executive leadership, adapting communication style to technical, operational, and board-level audiences as required.
• Act as a trusted adviser to client stakeholders throughout the program lifecycle, supporting informed decision-making and the adoption of industry best practices in banking transformation delivery.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• A minimum of ten years of program or project management experience, including at least three full-cycle banking or financial services transformation programs delivered end-to-end.
• Demonstrated experience managing multi-vendor, SaaS-based delivery environments, including core banking platforms such as Finastra, Temenos, Oracle FLEXCUBE, or equivalent.
• Sufficient familiarity with integration architecture concepts — including API management, middleware, and event-driven patterns — to engage substantively with vendor technical teams and evaluate proposed approaches.
• Experience in data migration planning and execution for financial systems, including legacy AS/400, IBM DB2, or mainframe environments, is considered a strong advantage.
• A proven record of managing fixed-price or hybrid commercial programs with formal change control frameworks and structured executive reporting.
• Formal project management certification: PMP, PRINCE2, or MSP is required; SAFe or equivalent Agile credentials are advantageous.
• Prior experience operating within regulated banking environments, including engagement with central bank or financial regulatory authorities.

Additional languages: Determined by engagement; multilingual capability is considered advantageous within the Banking Transformation Practice

 KEY COMPETENCIES

• Demonstrated ability to deliver full-cycle banking transformation programs with accountability for go-live outcomes and post-implementation stabilisation.
• Capacity to operate effectively across executive, operational, and technical stakeholder groups, adapting engagement style to the needs of each audience.
• Structured approach to program governance, risk management, and change control, balanced with the judgement to maintain delivery momentum in complex, multi-party environments.
• Cultural awareness and adaptability, with experience operating across diverse business environments and geographies.