Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Napier AI is a compliance technology company that combines big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to help financial institutions manage financial crime and trade compliance risks. The Senior Program Manager will lead complex enterprise software delivery programs, including Tier 1 bank implementations, while managing executive stakeholders, commercial governance, delivery risks, regulatory milestones, and customer transitions.
Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end delivery of Napier's largest enterprise programs, including Tier 1 National and European bank engagements
- Establish and run program governance: steering committees, executive status reviews, RAID discipline, decision logs
- Define and defend the acceptance criteria for go-live and any regulatory or contractual milestone
- Coordinate delivery across Napier's Professional Services, Product, Engineering, Platform, Support, and Customer Success functions
- Act as the single senior Napier delivery contact with the client's program director, delivery leads, and executive sponsors
- Chair steering committees and executive status forums with authority and credibility
- Prevent client escalations bypassing program governance
- Represent Napier at client executive escalations, industry regulator interactions where relevant, and third-party (hyperscaler, SI) governance
- Own program P&L, forecast, and margin
- Run formal change control against every scope movement, defect classification, and delivery obligation
- Defend Napier against uncapped commitments, one-sided release triggers, and unbounded acceptance criteria
- Hold the defect versus change request line: no product commitment leaves Napier without your sign-off
- Escalate commercial and contractual risk to the CCO before it becomes a client-facing position
- Maintain the end-to-end program plan, dependency map, and critical path
- Own the risk register and drive mitigations with named accountable owners
- Establish and maintain go/no-go readiness assessment against agreed criteria
- Drive continuous improvement in Napier's delivery methodology from evidence in the field
- Manage the operational side of any escrow, source-code deposit, or equivalent regulatory instrument on your programs, working with Napier Legal, Engineering, and the third-party agent
- Manage client expectations on trigger events, deposit content, and verification cycles
- Ensure customers achieve successful implementation, adoption, and business value realisation
- Manage a clean transition from delivery into Customer Success and Support with complete documentation and no orphaned commitments
Skills
- 12+ years leading large-scale enterprise software delivery programs, with at least 5 years at senior program director or equivalent level
- Direct financial crime compliance domain experience: AML, KYC, Transaction Monitoring, Sanctions Screening, or Case Management platforms. Not adjacent, not learned on the job during a stint - deep and current
- Delivered at least one enterprise implementation into a Tier 1 or systemic bank in the UK, EU, or US, chairing steering committees at C-1 level
- Proven turnaround experience: taken over a live enterprise program mid-flight, restored client confidence, re-baselined credibly, and landed a successful outcome
- Cloud-based enterprise SaaS platform delivery experience, ideally including hyperscaler-hosted environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP)
- Multi-vendor program experience across client, primary vendor, hyperscaler, and system integrator
- Strong commercial and contractual instincts: has run defensive change control, held scope, defended margin, and defeated attempts to reclassify enhancements as defects
- Experience of programs with regulatory or contractual hard deadlines (go/no-go gates, DORA, PRA/FCA supervisory dates, or equivalent)
- Presence and credibility at C-1 and C-suite client levels
- Experience of escrow, source-code deposit, or equivalent third-party regulatory instruments in a live client engagement
- Experience across multiple geographic regions (EMEA, Americas, APAC)
- Program management certifications (MSP, PgMP, PMP, Prince2) - useful, but not a substitute for the experience above
- Experience in Private Equity-backed software companies operating to a defined value creation plan
Benefits
- Fully remote
Company Overview