Job Description

IT Project Manager (Financial Services)

PCD270020
Location: Hybrid, City
Duration: 6 months
Rate: £627 per day
IR35: Inside IR35 / Umbrella

You must have Financial Services project delivery experience.

Role overview
We are looking for a contract IT Project Manager to deliver technology change within a Financial Services environment, from initiation through to handover. You will take ownership of end-to-end delivery, running the integrated project plan, maintaining delivery cadence, and ensuring risks, dependencies, and controls are actively managed. The environment is fast-paced and governance-led, with a strong emphasis on audit-ready documentation, controlled change, and stakeholder assurance. You will need clear structure, strong communication, and the confidence to challenge, escalate, and drive decisions at pace.

This role is hands-on and delivery-focused, coordinating technical teams, suppliers, and operational stakeholders to deliver change safely with minimal disruption. Work may span infrastructure, applications, cyber, cloud, data, or platform change, including regulatory-driven initiatives, security improvements, resilience upgrades, service optimisation, and end-user technology change.

Key responsibilities
You will own scope, schedule, budget tracking (where applicable), and RAID, ensuring delivery remains controlled, compliant, and transparent. You will build and maintain an integrated plan covering design, build, test, cutover, and transition activities, including milestones, dependencies, and implementation windows. You will run governance routines, including project working groups, stakeholder updates, risk reviews, and steering sessions, ensuring decisions are captured, actions are owned, and blockers are escalated early.

You will coordinate internal SMEs across engineering, architecture, security, operations, and service management, plus third-party suppliers and delivery partners. You will manage supplier deliverables, track progress against commitments, and actively manage external dependencies. You will oversee change control and implementation readiness, ensuring required artefacts are produced and approved, including project plans, test plans, comms plans, cutover plans, rollback plans, and handover packs. You will ensure delivery aligns with Financial Services controls and ways of working, including evidence capture, approvals, segregation of duties, and audit trail requirements.

You will drive testing coordination and sign-off, supporting UAT where applicable and ensuring defects are managed through triage and resolution. You will lead go/no-go sessions, coordinate implementation windows (including out-of-hours work when required), and ensure service transition is completed with operational readiness in place. This includes clear support ownership, monitoring and alerting, access and permissions, updated runbooks, knowledge transfer, and an agreed hypercare approach.

Reporting and stakeholder management
You will produce clear status packs and dashboards covering progress, milestones, RAID, decisions, actions, and budget (where applicable). You will maintain tight control of actions and decisions so leadership can unblock quickly, and you will communicate effectively across technical and non-technical audiences. You will proactively surface risk, challenge assumptions, and ensure delivery teams remain aligned to outcomes, timelines, and regulatory expectations.

What we are looking for
You will have proven experience delivering IT projects in complex Financial Services environments, such as banking, insurance, wealth management, payments, or fintech. You will be strong in planning, governance, and RAID management, with excellent stakeholder communication. You will have experience coordinating multi-team delivery and managing third-party suppliers. You will be comfortable working with operational teams and service management to ensure change control, operational readiness, and clean transition into BAU. You will understand the importance of controls, documentation discipline, and audit readiness, and you will be confident working at pace, driving delivery cadence, and escalating appropriately to protect outcomes.

Keywords:
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