Project Manager - Financial Services (Capital Markets)

Job Title : Project Manager - Financial Services (Capital Markets)

Location : Austin, TX (Onsite)

Duration : 12+ Months

Role Summary

We are seeking a highly experienced and dedicated Project Manager with a strong background in Financial Services, specifically within Capital Markets. This role demands an individual who embodies an ownership mentality, possesses structured thinking, and has a clear bias for clarity. The successful candidate will be accountable for driving project outcomes, navigating complex system boundaries, and ensuring alignment across various stakeholders and engineering teams. This is a critical role for individuals who thrive on enabling engineering while upholding strategic project goals and boundaries.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Planning & Execution:

• Translate strategic goals into actionable project plans, performing effective decomposition of complex initiatives.
• Proactively identify, assess, and mitigate project risks throughout the lifecycle.
• Monitor project progress diligently, identifying and addressing slippage early to ensure timely delivery.
• Stakeholder & Boundary Management:
• Act as a primary interface between business stakeholders and engineering teams, aligning competing priorities and fostering collaboration.
• Clearly define project scope, system boundaries (functional and architectural), and ownership to prevent scope creep and misalignment.
• Manage stakeholder requests by triaging them (in-scope, adjacent, out-of-scope), routing appropriately, coordinating cross-team efforts, or pushing back when necessary.
• Surface hidden scope expansions and dependencies, ensuring that engineering decisions align with overall project scope and business objectives.

Leadership & Communication:

• Maintain composure and provide clear direction under pressure, especially when addressing issues.
• Facilitate timely decision-making, clearly articulating trade-offs and ensuring all parties understand the rationale.
• Exhibit relentless follow-through on all tasks and commitments, ensuring commitments are met.
• Proactively communicate project status, challenges, and successes to all relevant stakeholders, ensuring "no surprises."
• Manage communication effectively both up (to leadership) and down (to team members).

Accountability & Drive:

• Drive accountability across the project team, even without direct authority, ensuring all contributors understand their roles and responsibilities.
• Continuously reprioritize tasks and objectives based on evolving realities and business needs.
• Challenge the "why" behind engineering solutions to ensure they align with business goals and project boundaries, while respecting engineering's ownership of the "how."

Required Qualifications & Skills

Domain Expertise (MUST-HAVE):

• Extensive experience (8+ years) in Financial Services, with deep domain knowledge in Capital Markets.
• Understanding of trading lifecycle, market data, regulatory requirements, and financial instruments.

Core Attributes:

• Ownership Mentality: Demonstrates full accountability for project outcomes, not just task completion.
• Structured Thinking: Ability to break down complex problems into manageable, logical parts.
• Bias for Clarity: Exceptional ability to define scope, roles, and success criteria unambiguously.
• Calm under pressure, capable of maintaining composure and effectiveness during critical issues.
• Pragmatic approach, balancing ideal solutions with achievable outcomes.

Core Skills (MUST-HAVE - Top 3):

• Planning and Decomposition: Proven ability to convert strategic goals into detailed, actionable project plans.
• Stakeholder Management: Expert in aligning diverse and often competing priorities among various stakeholders.
• Risk Management: Proactive and effective identification, assessment, and mitigation of project risks.

Other Key Skills:

• Excellent Communication: Clear, structured, and audience-specific communication skills (written and verbal).
• Decision Facilitation: Skilled in driving timely decisions with clear articulation of trade-offs.
• Execution Tracking: Strong ability to monitor progress and detect early signs of slippage.

Key Behaviors:

• Relentless follow-through on tasks and commitments.
• Proactive communication with a "no surprises" philosophy.
• A natural ability to force alignment across disparate stakeholder groups.
• Effective at managing expectations and communications with both superiors and direct reports/team members.
• Adept at driving accountability within a team, even without formal authority.
• Capable of continuous reprioritization based on dynamic project realities.