Role Purpose
myPulse.io is looking for an experienced Program Manager - Technology & Lending to lead and govern the delivery of strategic technology initiatives across the business. The role requires excellent understanding of lending businesses combined with strong technology program management expertise.
The Program Manager will manage Project Managers and provide end-to-end governance across the IT project portfolio, from requirements and planning through development, demonstrations, UAT, business sign-off, release and closure. The individual will be a key interface between Business, Product, Technology and senior management, ensuring that technology projects deliver agreed business outcomes with clear ownership, traceability and accountability.
Key Responsibilities
1. Program and Portfolio Management
- Own the integrated plan across major IT projects and technology initiatives.
- Manage and provide governance to Project Managers responsible for individual projects and workstreams.
- Establish project milestones, dependencies, critical paths, resource requirements and delivery commitments.
- Maintain consolidated RAID logs, decision logs, change controls and cross-project dependency tracking.
- Identify delivery risks early, drive mitigation actions and escalate material issues promptly.
- Ensure projects have clear scope, ownership, acceptance criteria, delivery dates and measurable outcomes.
- Track the technology portfolio against agreed milestones and highlight slippage before it becomes critical.
- Coordinate dependencies across Engineering, QA, Data, Infrastructure, Security, Product, Operations and third parties.
2. Lending Domain Leadership
Apply strong practical knowledge of the end-to-end lending lifecycle, including:
- Lead and application journey
- KYC/KYB and customer onboarding
- Credit bureau and data-provider integrations
- Credit assessment, decisioning, underwriting and approval
- Loan Origination Systems (LOS)
- Documentation and disbursement
- Loan Management Systems (LMS)
- Repayment, collections and arrears management
- Settlement, closure and customer servicing
- Regulatory, risk and operational controls
3. Requirements Governance and Traceability
- Ensure business requirements are formally elicited, documented, validated and approved.
- Provide governance across BRDs, functional requirements, user stories, process flows and acceptance criteria.
- Ensure end-to-end traceability across: Business Requirement -> Functional Requirement -> User Story -> Development -> Test Case -> UAT -> Business Sign-off -> Production Release.
- Ensure scope changes are assessed for business, technical, timeline and dependency impact before approval.
- Prevent requirements from being lost, changed informally or delivered without appropriate validation.
- Ensure Project Managers and Business Analysts maintain an accurate Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM).
4. Business Demonstrations, Testing and UAT
- Ensure regular sprint, solution and release demonstrations are conducted with relevant business stakeholders.
- Ensure delivered functionality is demonstrated against approved requirements and acceptance criteria.
- Coordinate UAT planning with business owners and ensure appropriate scenarios, test cases and test data are available.
- Track UAT defects, risks and exceptions through resolution or formal acceptance.
- Obtain formal business UAT sign-off before production release, in line with agreed release governance.
- Maintain auditable evidence of demonstrations, business acceptance, outstanding exceptions and approvals.
5. Stakeholder Management
- Act as the senior delivery interface between Technology and business stakeholders.
- Establish clear expectations regarding scope, timelines, dependencies, decisions and risks.
- Lead structured program governance and steering meetings.
- Drive timely decisions where projects are blocked by conflicting requirements or priorities.
- Ensure business owners actively participate in requirement validation, demonstrations and UAT.
- Escalate unresolved decisions and delivery constraints to the appropriate senior stakeholders.
6. Senior Management Reporting
- Provide concise, evidence-based executive reporting covering portfolio RAG status, milestones, delivery against plan, upcoming releases, risks, issues, dependencies, scope changes, UAT status and business sign-off.
- Highlight budget, capacity and resource constraints where applicable.
- Use exception-based reporting that clearly states what is on track, what is at risk, the cause, the recovery action, the owner and any management decision required.
- Provide a reliable single view of technology delivery for senior management.
7. Project Manager Leadership
- Manage, mentor and develop Project Managers.
- Create and enforce common project delivery, governance and reporting standards.
- Review project plans, estimates, delivery health, quality gates and recovery plans.
- Challenge unrealistic plans, incomplete dependencies and unsupported delivery commitments.
- Ensure Project Managers maintain risks, actions, issues, dependencies and decisions.
- Coordinate resources and priorities across projects, remove cross-project blockers and hold teams accountable for delivery commitments.
Mandatory Experience and Capabilities
- 12-16 years of overall professional experience, with significant experience managing complex technology programs and portfolios.
- Strong lending-domain experience is mandatory, with sound understanding of lending processes and technology platforms.
- Proven experience managing multiple Project Managers, workstreams and cross-functional delivery teams.
- Demonstrated delivery of technology initiatives involving Business, Product, Engineering, QA, Data, Infrastructure, Security and third parties.
- Strong requirements governance, change control and Requirements Traceability Matrix experience.
- Proven UAT governance, business acceptance and formal sign-off experience.
- Experience presenting program status, material risks and decisions to senior management.
- Excellent stakeholder management, negotiation, facilitation and executive communication skills.
- Strong knowledge of Agile, Scrum, Waterfall and hybrid delivery approaches.
- Hands-on experience with JIRA and/or Azure DevOps for planning, tracking, dashboards and governance.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Technology, Computer Applications, Business or a related discipline; MBA preferred.
- PMP, PRINCE2 Practitioner, PMI-ACP, SAFe or an equivalent recognized program/project management certification preferred.
