Principal Program Manager (Financial Services / Client-Facing)

Goods & Services

12d•Onsite

About The Position

Goods & Services is looking for a Principal Program Manager to own a broad spectrum of initiatives end-to-end and drive continuous improvement across teams in Mexico City and Greenville. This is a build-and-improve role: you'll operate amid ambiguity by setting priorities across multiple concurrent workstreams, and applying a kaizen mindset to remove the gating factors slowing delivery velocity, engineering quality, and release predictability. We need someone senior enough to exercise independent judgment on what matters most –not just execute a plan, but to shape it. This role is embedded directly inside client organizations; working alongside client leadership and senior stakeholders day to day, not observing from the outside. It requires real comfort operating in large, complex, dynamic corporate environments and with incomplete information. Because this is a client-facing consulting role, success depends as much on credibility as an outside partner as it does on program mechanics; this person represents our firm inside the client's organization every day, and their judgment reflects directly on the relationship.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years of experience in technical program management, business program management, or a related role leading complex, cross-functional initiatives, including significant experience in a client-facing consulting or professional services environment.
Experienced in multiple program management methodologies (waterfall, agile, scrum, kanban, lean, PgMP, SAFe, etc.), with judgment on which to apply per client and when to scale governance up or down.
Experience partnering with client engineering, operations, and business stakeholders to drive alignment, resolve dependencies, and deliver strategic outcomes.
Experience managing program risks, dependencies, executive escalations, and competing priorities in a fast-paced client environment.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with experience using data, metrics, and reporting to drive program decisions and measure success.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience presenting program status, risks, and recommendations to senior client leadership.
Proven ability to build credibility and influence cross-functional teams, including client teams where our firm holds no direct authority, and drive results.
Comfort operating as an outside advisor: building trust and credibility quickly in a new client organization without the built-in authority of an internal role.
Experience enabling others to use AI.
Tolerance for ambiguity: must be able to make sound calls and keep a program moving with incomplete information, then bring structure to the situation as it clarifies rather than waiting for clarity to act.
PMI Certification.
Experience in Financial Services sector.

Responsibilities

Lead the planning, execution, and delivery of complex, cross-functional technical programs on behalf of client organizations, ensuring alignment with the client's business objectives, technical strategy, organizational priorities and team dynamics.
Drive definition of program scope, milestones, timelines, dependencies, resource requirements, and budget within the engagement's statement of work (SOW), while proactively managing risks, issues, and changes throughout the program lifecycle.
Understand, communicate, and execute program strategies that align with the client's enterprise architecture, security, compliance and operational standards.
Serve as the escalation point for critical program, operational, and security issues, coordinating across client and consulting-team stakeholders to drive timely resolution and effective risk mitigation.
Enforce program governance, delivery standards, KPIs, service level agreements (SLAs), and reporting to ensure successful execution and operational excellence.
Enable strategic planning for program funding, resource allocation, forecasting, and organizational change management in support of the client's business priorities and the engagement's commercial terms.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives by optimizing the client's processes, workflows, automation, and operational practices to improve scalability, reliability, and efficiency.
Partner with client engineering, operations, security, and executive stakeholders — alongside our own delivery team — to align priorities, communicate program status, and influence strategic decision-making.
Leverage data, metrics, dashboards, and analytics to measure program health, identify trends, support decision-making, and improve business outcomes for the client.
Become a trusted advisor to client senior leadership, managing stakeholder expectations and ensuring program outcomes that support account growth and a durable long-term client relationship.
Identify opportunities for expanded scope within existing client relationships and contribute to proposals and statements of work.
Own program financials — budget, forecast, burn, and change-order/scope management — in a client-billable consulting context.
Active collaboration with Goods and Services to share engagement insights, adopt shared standards, and reinforce a unified organizational approach to client work.
Proactively share customer risks that could affect delivery, budget or account health, ensuring early visibility and enabling timely mitigation decisions.