Program Manager, Loyalty Build and Integration (Remote EST Hours)

Our Customer is a consumer financial services company headquartered in Connecticut. The company offers consumer financing products, including credit, promotional financing and loyalty programs, installment lending to industries, and FDIC-insured consumer savings products through the consumer bank, its wholly owned online bank subsidiary.

We are looking for a Loyalty Build & Integration Program Manager on a contract basis to help support our Customer's business needs. This role is 100% remote in EST hours.

This role will lead projects to launch loyalty capabilities. To accomplish this, the candidate must be effective in fostering cross-team relationships and bridging the comprehension gap between business teams and technology teams. This role oversees specific phases of a project and/or the entire project as Program Manager and oversees translation of business needs from the Product Manager into functional requirements. This role may work with other Project Managers of partnering teams as needed to ensure an aggregated program-level view of the overall scope of the initiative. The successful candidate will blend skill sets for the implementation of new loyalty features, capabilities and platforms.

What You'll Do:

• Provides leadership and oversight of interrelated projects of business, IT and external teams, program managing the sum that is a desired business objective outcome
• Defines scope and objectives of loyalty projects, and develops detailed business requirements with the Product Manager, from which IT Teams can create technical specifications
• Acts as the Product Owner in an Agile framework, providing direction to IT Teams as agreed upon per business needs
• Defines stories and prioritizes the backlog of features with the Product Manager to maintain the conceptual and technical integrity of enterprise loyalty platforms in an Agile framework
• Develops detailed project plans inclusive of each milestone, date and progress status, partnering with project leaders responsible for different internal functions and external suppliers to ensure a cohesive successful project launch
• Leads client teams through capabilities education, requirements gathering, design, build and validation project phases for loyalty platform migrations as needed
• Delivers loyalty projects engagements within the constraints of the schedule, features/functionality, and budget
• Analyzes and evaluates client-initiated changes to existing Loyalty systems to enhance or develop from a business perspective, taking into consideration technical impact from IT partners and ultimately prioritizing with the Product Manager
• Manages the work that must be done across multiple business functions to deliver an integrated solution usually composed of products, services, or a formalized solution offering
• Establishes a strategy of continuous risk management that enables proactive decisions and actions throughout the project life cycle and create an environment to support it where the project team has visible, measurable, and repeatable processes for managing these risks
• Stays current and involved in collecting conditions of the project relative to resources (people and optionally funding/cost), schedule (time), and features (the solution and its quality) as specified by the established project protocol. In addition, performs the process of comparing actual performance with planned performance, analyze variances, evaluate possible alternatives and take appropriate corrective action (control) as specified by the established project protocol
• Collects, reviews and publishes project status regarding resources (people and optionally funding/cost), schedule (time), stakeholder management, and features (the solution and its quality) that influence project performance and completion.
• Conducts project obstacle analyses and submits recommendations for solutions while following methodology, policies and procedures.
• Assists the Product Manager in the development of the Product Roadmap for Core Releases to strengthen and make the platform strong and a competitive leader in the industry without compromising the integrity of the system or the company
• Analyzes complex Loyalty problems and issues and offers alternative business solutions.
• Conducts analysis on loyalty challenges/issues and leads the cross functional teams to resolution
• Performs other duties and/or special projects as assigned

Qualifications/Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree. In lieu of a degree, 8+ years of work experience in business, product, project management or business operations
• A minimum of 4 years of demonstrated experience owning the build of business or IT project plans, developing business requirements, and project status communications

Preferred:

• Business requirements and functional requirements development
• Ability to quickly gain basic understanding of loyalty technology systems and processes needed for requirements accuracy
• Ability to lead a cross functional team
• Ability to direct and manage deliverables from external suppliers
• Proficiency in JIRA and experience managing within the Agile framework of methodologies to achieve project results
• Knowledge of IT architecture, infrastructure and systems dependencies
• Business and consumer perspective
• PMP or Agile certification

Perks are available through our 3rd Party Employer of Record (Available upon completion of waiting period for eligible engagements)

Health Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life (including spouse & child), 401k, STD/LTD, AD&D, and Commuter Benefits program.

An Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.