Program Manager

TalentOla•Cary, NC

23d•Hybrid

About The Position

A leading insurance carrier is building an enterprise Data Hub on Azure Databricks, Azure Data Factory, and ADLS Gen 2. The hub is the single point of data movement for the enterprise: all inbound source systems land data in the hub, the hub supplies Workday, processed results flow back from Workday into the hub, and every downstream consumer extracts from the hub rather than from source systems. The current phase delivers the Finance domain. Subsequent phases extend the same hub to Actuarial, Investment, Reinsurance, and Risk. Each phase adds new inbound feeds, new outbound consumers, and new curated data products on the same platform. We are looking for an experienced Program Manager to own delivery of the Data Hub program end to end. This role is accountable for the hub itself and everything that moves data through it. You will be the single person who can state, at any moment, where every workstream stands, what is at risk, what is blocked, and what is needed from whom. The program is delivered by teams from multiple parties, including the client organization, systems integrators, and technology and implementation partners, working side by side across workstreams. A large part of this role is making that multi-party delivery behave as one program: consistent planning and reporting across all parties, clear ownership at every handoff, and dependencies between organizations managed as tightly as those inside a single team.

Requirements

10+ years in IT delivery with 5+ years as Program or senior Project Manager accountable for multi-workstream programs and their overall status.
Demonstrated experience delivering data platform, data warehouse, data lake, or large-scale integration programs, not solely application or infrastructure projects.
Working knowledge of modern cloud data architecture: ingestion patterns, batch and near-real-time pipelines, lake zones, data quality gates, and API or file-based integration.
Proven track record managing a large interface or integration portfolio through build, test, and production cutover.
Rigorous discipline with program plans, dependency registers, RAID logs, and status reporting, plus the ability to keep them genuinely current.
Strong executive presence: able to present status and bad news to senior stakeholders clearly and hold the line under pressure.
Proven success running a multi-party program, with teams from the client, systems integrators, and technology or implementation partners delivering together, and the ability to lead through influence rather than reporting lines.
Experience coordinating across many stakeholder groups: business teams, internal engineering, package or platform program teams, source-system owners, and downstream consumers.
Hands-on with Jira, Azure DevOps, MS Project or Smartsheet, and Confluence or equivalent; comfortable building reporting from delivery tooling.
Experience in both Agile and hybrid or stage-gated delivery models, and the judgment to know which each workstream needs.
Ability to work a hybrid schedule from Cary, NC.

Nice To Haves

Insurance or financial services experience, with awareness of statutory and regulatory reporting, audit expectations, and financial close constraints.
Hands-on familiarity with Azure Databricks, Azure Data Factory, and ADLS Gen 2, or comparable platforms such as Synapse, Microsoft Fabric, or Snowflake.
Experience on an ERP modernization or Workday program, including Workday integration patterns (EIB, Core Connectors, Prism) and their delivery constraints.
Experience running a program that supports multiple business domains in sequence, such as Finance, Actuarial, Investment, Reinsurance, or Risk.
PMP, PgMP, PRINCE2, SAFe, or Scrum certification.
Experience managing distributed onshore and offshore teams across multiple vendors and time zones.

Responsibilities

Own the integrated program plan across every Data Hub workstream: platform, inbound, Workday bi-directional, outbound, data quality, and operations. Keep it current at all times, not refreshed before steering meetings.
Drive workstream leads to realistic, resource-loaded plans with clear milestones, entry and exit criteria, and named owners.
Maintain the critical path across workstreams and flag schedule impact the moment a milestone moves.
Run the program cadence: workstream stand-ups, program calls, dependency reviews, steering committee, and executive updates.
Manage scope and change control, so every change is assessed for cost, schedule, and cross-workstream impact before it is accepted.
Lead teams from multiple companies toward one plan, one set of milestones, and one definition of done, without direct reporting authority over most of them.
Set common standards for estimation, planning, status reporting, and defect management so every party reports in the same language and the roll-up is comparable.
Make handoffs between organizations explicit (who delivers what, to whom, in what state, by when) and hold both sides to it.
Build trust and working relationships across party lines; keep the focus on program outcomes rather than organizational boundaries or blame.
Manage partner and vendor commitments against SOWs and service expectations, and escalate through the right channel in each organization when commitments slip.
Onboard incoming teams from any party quickly into the program's standards, tooling, environments, and access.
Publish clear, consistent status for each workstream and a defensible overall program status: RAG ratings backed by reasoning, not a color chosen for comfort.
Report against plan with real measures: milestone burn-up, interface delivery counts by stage, defect trends, environment and release readiness.
Build and maintain a single source of truth for program status, decisions, and artifacts so stakeholders stop asking for one-off updates.
Tailor communication by audience: engineering detail for delivery teams, decisions and exposure for executives.
Escalate early and with a recommendation, not just a problem statement.
Maintain a tightly managed cross-team dependency register spanning source-system owners, Workday teams, downstream consumers, infrastructure, security, and every delivery partner. Each entry carries a named owner on both sides, the accountable party, and a committed date.
Run a live risk register with impact, likelihood, triggers, mitigation, and contingency; drive mitigation to completion instead of logging and reporting.
Own issue and blocker resolution: triage, assign, chase, and escalate on a clock. Nothing sits without an owner and a next action.
Anticipate collisions such as freeze periods, financial close windows, shared environments, and overlapping release trains, and resolve them before they become impacts.
Drive decisions to closure with the right people in the room, and document what was decided and why.
Manage program financials: budget, forecast, actuals, variance, and vendor or partner invoicing and SOW milestones.
Manage resourcing and onboarding across workstreams and across parties, including offshore teams, and surface capacity gaps before they bite.
Ensure delivery follows the agreed SDLC, change management, security, and audit controls expected in a regulated insurance environment.
Coordinate release, cutover, and hypercare planning for interfaces going live, including rollback and contingency.
Drive consistency in how workstreams estimate, track, and report so the program plan means the same thing everywhere.