AVP, Program/Project Management (Executive Level)

USAA•San Antonio, TX

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Assistant Vice President (AVP), Program & Project Management is a senior executive leader responsible for driving enterprise-wide strategic initiatives and leading the successful integration of transformational change across the organization. This role serves as a critical bridge between strategy and execution, ensuring organizational priorities are delivered effectively while maintaining operational stability and business performance. The AVP provides vision, leadership, and operational direction for a portfolio of complex business programs, projects, and change initiatives that advance strategic objectives and deliver measurable business value. Partnering closely with executive leadership and key stakeholders across the enterprise, this leader develops and executes change strategies that accelerate adoption, optimize outcomes, and strengthen organizational capabilities. The ideal candidate is a highly influential leader with exceptional business acumen, a proven track record of leading large-scale transformations, and the ability to align cross-functional teams around a common vision while navigating complex organizational dynamics. We offer a flexible work environment that requires an individual to be in the office 4 days per week. This position is based in San Antonio, TX.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree; OR 4 years of relevant education and/or experience.
10 years of progressive experience in program/project management leadership, process improvement and/or consulting for large strategic efforts.
6 years of people leadership experience in building, managing and/or developing high-performing teams.
Extensive experience in successfully managing complex strategic program/project through the project lifecycle, from conception through rollout and on-going support in a large or medium-size organization, preferably a financial institution.
Experience collaborating with key resources and stakeholders, influencing decisions, and managing work to achieve strategic goals.
Executive-level understanding and experience with strategic-level change management.
Executive-level experience delivering member or customer facing capabilities in a complex multi-channel, multi-product, integrated system environment.
Executive-level experience with systems design and development from business requirements analysis through to day-to-day management.
Experience on project and program management and execution experience delivering complex work efforts working with Waterfall and Agile methodologies.
Comprehensive understanding of risk management policies and procedures with experience identifying risks and key risk indicators and building processes and controls to solve for those risks.
Comprehensive understanding of USAA's change methodology or commensurate industry change methodology.

Nice To Haves

Experience in financial services, insurance, or other highly regulated industries.
Experience leading enterprise customer/member experience, business transformation, or strategic execution initiatives.
Demonstrated ability to influence senior executives and drive alignment across complex, matrixed organizations.
Strong analytical skills with experience leveraging member insights, operational metrics, and performance dashboards to drive decision making.
Experience partnering with technology, operations, and product teams to deliver member-centric capabilities and process improvements.
Proven success leading to organizational change and adopting new ways of working at scale.
US military experience through military service or a military spouse/domestic partner

Responsibilities

Accountable for leading the organizational integration of Program/Project processes/methodologies to ensure complex, area-specific, or Enterprise-wide initiatives are in alignment with the strategic vision.
Provides thought leadership to develop and enhance enterprise program and project management methods, tools, and templates to deliver better client and employee experience.
Develops strong relationships with cross-functional key stakeholders by leading program steering committees with senior management and program sponsors.
Maintains awareness of current industry best practices and trends, and risk, legal, and regulatory changes in Financial Services and technical fields (i.e., risk management, modeling, data infrastructure, data management, systems architecture, batch, and real-time processing) to provide effective consultation for business requests and project/program structuring activities.
Leads components of on-going operational planning and collaborates with other senior leadership or line of business stakeholders across business units to ensures the business is prepared to support and participate in the execution methodology for technical and business work efforts.
Identifies trends and develops action plans to resolve abstract problems outside of set guidelines that impact the process execution.
Makes strategic decisions that influence the operational and financial performance, ensuring outcomes effectively manage risk and compliance.
Establishes key metrics (i.e., deliverables, financials, duration, benefits) to measure success and influence internal project/program methodologies and approaches.
Adheres to EPMO processes, procedures, controls, standards, tools, and templates (as required).
Drives the adoption and sustainment of changes within the organization in compliance with USAA's Change Management methodology.
Ensures risks associated with business activities are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures.