The Head of PMO is responsible for ensuring that Cellulant’s programs and projects are planned, managed, and governed in a consistent, transparent, and disciplined manner. The position requires experienced program management professionals with the right mix of relevant experience and skills, and ability to flex between the strategic and the tactical engagement and a high level of energy and flexibility to get things done and thrive in a fast-paced, team-oriented product development environment.

S(he) will be a program management leader who embodies Cellulant’s leadership principles of communicating openly and collaborating effectively. The ability to work across functions and teams and geographies will allow him/her to ensure alignment of priorities and goals, drive results and foster a culture and environment to achieve excellence and innovation. In this role, s(he) will manage a team of Technical Program/Project Managers who use the Agile framework to deliver critical, customer-facing, enterprise software development projects to our customers.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES:

The role holder would be responsible for the following:

• Provide leadership and oversight to a team of technical program/project managers who use agile practices & frameworks for the planning, execution, and delivery of products/projects
• Work with Business Sponsors, Product & Technical leaders to develop project roadmaps that align with business objectives/priorities and take into account resource availability.
• Drive the refinement of Project delivery metrics to track project progress and highlight any bottlenecks in the project delivery process
• Overall responsibility for planning, executing, tracking, and managing cost, schedule, and scope for all projects in the portfolio.
• Drive both internal and stakeholder engagements to address project impediments with a view of delivering progressing shorter project lead and cycle times
• Direct project/program activities, conduct reviews, and use strong technical and business acumen to manage risk and address escalated impediments.
• Enforce consistency and standardise processes across project management office and organisation at large
• Drive the adoption of clear project acceptance criteria to ensure an optimal project mix per month to drive the envisaged business objectives
• Drive the adoption of key engineering practices like Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development, Continuous Delivery, etc. to improve the quality and reliability of the team’s deliverables.
• Build and retain a high-performance team of project/program managers

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE:

• Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification is mandatory.
• PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP®), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant (SAFe SPC) certification/ experience is mandatory.
• Excellent knowledge of commonly used Project management tools
• Bachelor’s/ Masters degree within a relevant field. STEM focus (Science, Technology, Engineering or Math) is a plus as is an MBA
• 10+ years of relevant work experience in either Program, Project, or Portfolio management.
• 7+ years of experience hiring, training, mentoring, and managing a project team of 5+ members.
• Knowledge of Agile, Scrum & Lean principles and practices.
• Solid understanding of project management techniques, methodologies, and best practices.
• Excellent ability to understand architectural and technical aspects of projects. knowledge of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) principles and practices.
• Deep experience in managing complex programs delivered by distributed teams. (Experience in Telecoms, Banking, Fintech/Payments space is an added advantage)
• Strong leadership qualities and organisational skills as well as the ability to adapt quickly to changing priorities, assignments, and roles and ability to influence at all levels in an organisation Independent judgment and mature decision-making skills to deal with programs that often have enterprise-wide scope and may have significant financial and compliance impacts.
• Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills. In particular, a demonstrated ability to effectively communicate technical and business issues and solutions to multiple organisational levels internally and externally as needed to support the strategic goals.