Project Manager, Adviser Vector

Job Description

At abrdn, we empower our clients to plan, save and invest for their futures.

Through the expertise, insight and innovation of our team, we aim to help clients create more ways for money to make an impact. We set our sights on giving them more confidence to achieve their goals, and more clarity about what they need next. And we focus on delivering outcomes that are more than just financial – by investing sustainably to build a better world.

We are structured around three businesses – Investments, Adviser and Personal – focused on the changing needs of our clients, and by diversifying the group, we are positioning ourselves for growth in a changing investment landscape.

Our Adviser business provides financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers, enabling them to bring value for their businesses and their clients.

The Adviser Change team is a specialised function, supporting the development and transformation of abrdn’s award winning open-architecture platforms; Wrap and Elevate; as well as the broader change agenda of abrdn’s Adviser business.

We are about more than technology. As a Project Manager, you will lead a cross-functional team of change professionals from across our business – and beyond - to both sustain and radically transform our end-to-end Adviser business.

This role will typically report to a Programme Manager, within a matrix-based delivery structure.  This matrix will leverage horizontal delivery projects/work-streams and vertical programmes/transition states from Initiation through to Delivery.  The change lifecycle is underpinned by an overall Programme Management Office which provides comprehensive delivery support processes and governance rigour.

Key Responsibilities:

• Responsibility for project, work-stream(s), or release within a programme, ensuring delivery is to time, budget and quality.

• Applies and champions the appropriate project management discipline, i.e. planning, resourcing, scheduling, monitoring, reporting and risk, assumption, issue and dependency management.

• Establishes an effective project organisation structure.

• Responsible for the development and management of budget and expenditure within their work-streams.

• Responsibility for managing relationships with stakeholders and key customers to ensure delivery meets requirements

• Responsible for setting and managing the quality of deliverables for projects ensuring that appropriate standards are applied.

• Ensure the delivered project meets the needs of the business as specified in the original requirements and that the agreed quality standards have been met.

• Responsible for reporting and presenting on project status to the Programme, Steering Committee, stakeholders and senior management as required.

Minimum candidate requirements (skills/experience):

• Proven business and IT project delivery experience, using different Agile methodologies

• Experienced in managing complex interdependent deliveries across multiple work-streams and vendors

• Skilled in complex commercial tracking with structures covering proposition development and outsourced elements of delivery.

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills with experience presenting at a senior level and having difficult but constructive conversations with stakeholders as this role works directly with sponsors and chair Steering Committees

• Third party delivery experience – will need to manage challenging third parties; so need experience at working in a third party environment and having delivery accountability

• Problem solving - ability to understand the challenges their team are facing and help them find the route to resolution

• Ability to quickly assess a situation and determine the correct next steps and priority tasks for the team to focus on

• Commercial awareness, understanding of how to apply a commercial lens to discussions and decisions

• Planning, Tracking and Co-ordinating a combination of Functional, Data Migration, Application and Data decommissioning and driving the team to make pragmatic decisions around 'what is good enough'

Qualifications & Experience – Desirable

• Wrap or Wealth Platform change delivery experience.

• Experience, knowledge and understanding within the Life & Pensions industry is highly desirable, particularly in the field of data and product migration.

• Relevant Project / Programme / Portfolio / PMO Management qualification(s) e.g., PRINCE2; MSP; MoP; P3O.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. Therefore, if you have a disability and would like to submit an application to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire and one of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our Benefits

There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported. 

When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around, including 40 days annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance-based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount site amongst many others. You can read more about our benefits here.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment.  We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance.  We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.

If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.