Job Title: Project Manager — IT / Digital Delivery
Location: Dubai, UAE
ROLE SUMMARY:
We are looking for an experienced Project Manager to lead the end-to-end delivery of technology and digital projects. You will act as the bridge between business stakeholders and technical teams — translating business objectives into deliverable plans, running the Agile ceremonies that keep delivery moving, removing impediments, and holding delivery to scope, schedule, budget, and quality commitments. You will provide regular, clear and credible reporting to senior and executive management, and manage risks, issues, dependencies, and third-party vendors across the project lifecycle. Working knowledge of trading and capital markets is essential for this role.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
Project Delivery & Governance
Own project delivery end to end — initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, control and closure — for one or more concurrent technology projects.
Define the project charter: scope, objectives, deliverables, success criteria, assumptions, constraints and governance model.
Build and maintain integrated project plans, roadmaps, milestone schedules, dependency maps and critical path analysis.
Manage project budgets: cost estimation, forecasting, actuals tracking, variance analysis, purchase orders and invoice validation.
Manage resource plans and capacity across internal teams, contractors and vendors.
Operate formal change control — assess and document the impact of scope changes on cost, schedule, quality and risk, and secure the appropriate approvals.
Ensure compliance with PMO standards, SDLC governance, information-security requirements, internal audit and applicable regulatory obligations.
Maintain complete and auditable project documentation and artefacts.
Risk, Issue & Dependency Management
Maintain and actively work the RAID log (risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies).
Identify risks early, quantify impact and probability, define mitigation and contingency plans, and assign clear ownership.
Resolve issues at the lowest effective level and escalate promptly and factually when resolution is beyond the project's authority.
Manage cross-project and cross-team dependencies, including infrastructure, security, data, operations and external parties.
Stakeholder Management & Communication
Act as the primary point of contact for business stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.
Work with business stakeholders, business analysts and product owners to elicit, challenge and prioritise requirements, and confirm that the delivered solution meets the stated business need.
Chair steering committees and project boards; prepare and present decision papers and options analyses.
Provide regular, accurate status reporting to upper management and executives — progress against plan, budget position, risks, issues, decisions required and forecast completion.
Build and maintain executive dashboards and reporting packs; tailor the level of detail to the audience.
Manage expectations and negotiate trade-offs across scope, time, cost and quality with credibility and transparency.
Manage vendors and third parties: statements of work, deliverable acceptance, service levels, performance reviews and commercial escalation.
Agile Delivery
Facilitate Agile ceremonies with the delivery team: sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews and retrospectives.
Work with product owners to keep the backlog healthy — well-formed stories, clear acceptance criteria, correct prioritisation and readiness for sprint.
Track and report delivery metrics: velocity, burndown and burnup, cycle time, throughput, defect trends and release predictability.
Identify and remove impediments blocking the team; protect the team from unmanaged scope change and disruption.
Coach the team and the wider business on Agile practices, and operate hybrid Agile/waterfall approaches where the project or regulatory context requires it.
Drive continuous improvement from retrospective actions and lessons learned.
Quality, Release & Transition
Coordinate test planning and execution across system, integration, performance, security and user acceptance testing.
Manage UAT with business stakeholders, including defect triage, prioritisation and sign-off.
Plan and coordinate releases: cutover plans, rollback plans, go/no-go criteria and production readiness reviews.
Manage business readiness — training, communications, process changes and organisational change impacts.
Ensure a clean transition to support operations, including documentation, handover and hypercare.
Run post-implementation reviews, capture lessons learned and track benefits realisation against the business case.
REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE:
Minimum 8 years of project management experience delivering IT, software and digital projects end to end, including at least 3 years in an Agile delivery environment.
Proven track record of delivering multiple concurrent projects on time, within budget and to agreed quality standards.
Strong command of both Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and traditional/hybrid delivery methodologies (waterfall, stage-gate).
Demonstrated ability to run Agile ceremonies effectively and coach teams in Agile practice.
Strong planning and scheduling skills including work breakdown structures, estimation techniques, dependency management and critical path analysis.
Budget, cost control, resource planning and vendor/contract management experience.
Rigorous risk, issue, dependency and change management discipline.
Excellent executive communication, reporting and presentation skills; able to distil complex technical detail into clear business language.
Strong stakeholder management, negotiation, influencing and conflict-resolution skills across all levels of an organisation.
Sufficient technical literacy to engage credibly with engineering teams — SDLC, APIs and integrations, cloud, web and mobile applications, data and reporting, testing, environments and release management — and to challenge estimates, designs and risk assessments.
Requirements and business-analysis fundamentals: process flows, user stories, acceptance criteria, traceability.
Hands-on proficiency with project and collaboration tooling such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, SharePoint and Power BI or equivalent reporting tools.
Advanced Microsoft Office skills, particularly Excel and PowerPoint for analysis and executive reporting.
Working knowledge of trading and capital markets is essential — including the trade lifecycle (order origination, routing, execution, clearing and settlement), market data, brokerage and exchange operations, post-trade processes, and the regulatory and compliance environment in which they operate.
Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
PREFERRED / ADVANTAGEOUS:
Professional certification such as PMP, PRINCE2, PMI-ACP, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM) or SAFe.
Arabic language proficiency (spoken and written) — preferred.
Experience delivering projects for an exchange, brokerage, bank, asset manager or fintech.
Experience managing regulatory, compliance-driven or audited technology programmes.
Experience managing systems integrators and offshore or distributed delivery teams.
Formal change-management training (for example Prosci / ADKAR).
Experience with ITIL service transition, or with programme-level or portfolio-level delivery.
Experience introducing or improving PMO processes, templates and delivery governance.
QUALIFICATIONS & EDUCATION:
