Programme Director

This is an exciting opportunity for a strong Programme Director to be a part of an end-to-end, multi-stream, cross-border implementation of next-generation payments technology.

The Programme Director is the senior delivery and commercial leader responsible for managing a multi-stream, distributed technical delivery programme on behalf of a services firm. The role provides executive oversight, governance leadership, financial stewardship, contractual management, and stakeholder engagement to ensure that technical design, engineering, and deployment services are delivered in full accordance with client requirements and contracted milestones. 

The Programme Director ensures predictable delivery, strong quality governance, commercial control, and cohesive execution across all distributed delivery teams and cross-party dependencies.

Key Responsibilities

Programme Governance & Oversight

• Own the end-to-end governance framework for the programme, ensuring it covers delivery performance, quality controls, risk management, financial tracking, and contractual alignment.
• Establish and lead governance forums including steering committees, executive reviews, delivery boards, quality checkpoints, and risk boards.
• Ensure governance processes are consistently applied across all streams and delivery centres, providing the structure needed for controlled and transparent delivery.
• Ensure that quality controls, such as design assurance, integration readiness checks, and milestone acceptance reviews, are built into the governance process and appropriately adhered to by delivery teams.
• Maintain a consolidated view of programme health, drawing on delivery metrics, quality indicators, risk profiles, and financial performance.

Contractual Accountability & Compliance

• Act as the contract owner for all services delivered under the programme.
• Ensure delivery aligns fully with contractual scope, SOWs, milestones, dependencies, service levels, and acceptance criteria, including any contractual quality obligations.
• Oversee contract compliance related to security, auditability, data handling, and client-mandated standards or controls.
• Manage all contractual changes, including variations, extensions, amendments, and re-baselining.
• Enforce contractual boundaries and prevent scope drift or misinterpretation through rigorous governance and change control.

3. Financial & Commercial Management

• Own the programme’s financial performance: revenue, margin, cost control, burn rates, and forecasting.
• Ensure that commercial reporting is accurate, timely, and reflective of delivery progress and milestone acceptance.
• Identify and mitigate commercial risks such as unplanned effort, dependency-driven delays, resource inefficiencies, or rework cost exposure.
• Lead commercial negotiations with the client relating to:
  • Change requests or variations
  • Additional work packages
  • Contract extensions or renewals
  • Rate or resource model changes
• Ensure workforce planning across distributed teams aligns with commercial constraints and quality expectations.

Senior Stakeholder Management & Escalation

• Act as the primary senior liaison for client programme leadership, procurement, PMO, and cross-party governance bodies.
• Lead escalations involving delivery delays, cross-party coordination issues, quality concerns impacting acceptance, environmental constraints, or contractual disagreements.
• Provide high-quality executive reporting on delivery readiness, risk status, dependency management, commercials, and quality controls.

Risk, Issue & Dependency Leadership

• Own programme-level risks, issues, and dependencies requiring cross-stream or cross-party intervention.
• Ensure the governance framework includes structured risk identification, mitigation planning, escalation paths, and quality-related risk tracking.
• Oversee management of technical, organisational, and contractual dependencies across client teams, internal teams, and third parties.
• Drive timely resolution of blockers threatening contracted milestone achievement or quality gate readiness.

Leadership Across Distributed Delivery Teams

• Provide executive leadership across all global delivery centres to ensure cohesive communication, consistent expectations, and aligned execution.
• Work closely with Programme Manager(s) to ensure delivery remains within contractual scope, schedule, quality expectations, and financial boundaries.
• Promote a culture of quality, accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement across all delivery locations.