Meet The Team - David Dean, Chairman

We have an exciting opportunity for a Programme Manager or Programme Director to work on a permanent basis for a client of ours who are a rapidly growing and global banking technology provider. The Programme Manager will report at Board level within this organisation and be responsible for strategic assignments business change, process re-engineering, and software product delivery as well as some product development initiatives. We are looking for candidates with "extensive” banking & financial services experience -meaning corporate/investment/private banking, wealth management, and treasury and/or capital markets - who have worked for well recognized and leading software & services providers or for recognized banks with a large delivery and strategic remit. The successful candidate will also demonstrate staying power with organisations and will not have jumped around in the career history i.e. my client wants to identify committed people with end-end delivery, including evolving programme or portfolio management experience. This role will combine a core strategic element but maintain a focus on delivery and getting the job done. There are numerous workstreams from management large client relationships, multi-year product roadmap deliveries to overseeing and aiding in software / customer development initiatives.

The Programme Manager will be a personable, confident, professional character, be used to working with international business and technology teams and have a keen eye for detail. This is not a role that will see someone sit around vast numbers of support staff and will therefore require the person to have a keen eye for detail and from time-time roll their sleeves up and muck in. The environment is team orientated, but this person needs to take the lead. My client could be looking for someone who is up and coming, has demonstrated staying power and commitment and is looking for something new to get to the next level, or this role could equally suit someone who brings considerable experience and maturity to the equation. In both cases, the successful candidate will bring banking & financial services, software, business change, process re-engineering, product implementations and commercial know-how to the table.

My client will reward well in terms of remuneration and I can consider candidates currently earning £80-130k base. All senior level applications are welcome. Please send CVs as word documents only.

Our client is a global provider of banking technology and they have an exciting new opportunity for a PMO Coordinator to work on a contract basis with the view to permanent conversion after 6 months. This role is based in Central London and will see you work with some high profile Banks across the UK.

We are looking for Project Coordinators, Administrators and Analysts with; experience of working in financial services and / or banking; experience of working on software projects / product implementations; a good academic track record including professional qualifications in project management and perhaps also technology; a positive can-do attitude, solutions orientated and someone who has gained solid commercial experience thus far but is looking to get ahead in a company that is growing rapidly. This role is contract to start with but will convert to permanent and as such we are looking to identify people who would fit into the organisation / team as well as those who posses the necessary skills. If you come from or have worked at a Big 5 consulting company or a large recognized banking & financial services vendor organisation, this would be hugely advantageous. My client is growing rapidly so opportunity for growth will be available to you as well.

The Project Coordinator will; Liaise with and report to the Project Manager; Act as first point of contact in PM's absence; Keep PM and other parties up-to-date with project progress, escalations etc; Manage and track project plans, change requests, risks & issues and project finances/budget; Organize and sometimes chair meetings, certainly taking minutes in meetings; Raising and sending invoices; Organize travel / accommodation for project resources and ensure expenses / timesheets are collated, authorized etc on time; Ensure proper filing and storing of project information; Help to communicate across the project the material and information that is needed as and when according to instructions and plans etc; be experienced in Banking & Financial Services; Software Project Implementations; Ideally have Financial Systems experience; be London based.

PRINCE2, MSP, PMP qualifications would be important, as would a degree educated individual. Fluency in English is essential as is the ability to work/travel in the UK and Europe without the need of sponsorship or additional visas.

We have an extremely exciting opportunity for a smart, intelligent, well educated, communicative, technically savvy and business focused Applications Support Analyst / Consultant with experience of working for a software vendor to join a growing global financial software provider. The role will see this person work on the software configuration, installation and rollout, software systems upgrades, technical support (3rd and 4th line) and some business and systems analysis onsite with customers. The sales team sells my clients solution, the professional services team set up, initiate and management the delivery, handing over to technical services to deliver the final piece. We are looking for someone with 2-5 years professional experience and someone who has worked on the systems installation and integration of software products, as apposed to bespoke development. This is not a hardware, infrastructure or networks role, this is a software systems integration and support role. This role is based in London with travel (40-50%) in the UK and mainland Europe to customer sites. It is permanent and will report to the Head of Technical Services. You will have; 1st class or 2:1 Degree in IT / Computer Science or similar from a leading and globally recognized university; at least 3 years professional experience ideally 3-5 years experience with 3 years in a client facing role; MS SQL Server Database Platform; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP and Widows 7; worked in small team environments (3-10 people); and ideally have experience on financial software applications; a good understanding of systems configuration and installation as well as support. Ideally you will also have MS SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. My client offers good training, an excellent, friendly, relaxed, team ethic environment with opportunities for growth and development. Many of the directors started as graduates with the company and have progressed over the last 10 years to their current roles. The company is growing and they will look for personalities who can offer their current team some good experiences, enjoyable work and projects, some good social events and ultimately product good work by learning and acting quickly.

Our client is a global provider of corporate treasury software and they have an exciting new opportunity for someone to manage projects and clients in Hong Kong and the wider APAC region. This role is a permanent role, based in Hong Kong where most of the Asian clients are based with work also being done in the other large financial centres across Asia with Singapore a key target area. The Project Manager role is a new role in my client's organisation as they are now witnessing rapid growth in numbers (revenue and profit), clients and consequently staff. The role of the PM is to bring a mature understanding of project delivery, but due to the small nature of my client's business (c120 people), it will be important to have the ability and experience of working in a self-sufficient manner/environment.

The Project Manager will be required to work with the Implementation Consultants and the Sales Managers to manage customer relationships, deliver success software projects, work on pre-sales assignments and ultimately bring better delivery knowledge and practice to the organisation. This role is a Hong Kong based role, with travel across Asia Pacific and the successful candidate will therefore need to demonstrate flexibility and ability to travel. The successful Project Manager will demonstrate a good understanding of software product delivery, ideally corporate treasury software, and have demonstrable successful track record of project delivery in a vendor environment. You will have worked for vendors/suppliers and understand the complexities around managing software projects with teams based in different locations, have the commercial skills and knowledge to work on the vendor side managing external customers, 3rd parties and internal stakeholders as well as business units with vested interests in successful delivery (sales, marketing, consulting, development, finance, support etc). As the Project Manager, the success and failure of the project is your responsibility as is the relationship that my client has with the customers. It is therefore essential that we identify a Project Manager used to managing a wide range of people from different companies, across geographical boundaries with varying cultural backgrounds and language abilities.

The Project Manager will also have a thorough knowledge and understanding of project management methods, processes, tools and techniques, and this will need to be demonstrable thorough the discussions. My client is looking for someone who understands the fundamentals behind project management, software product delivery, external customer management, full life cycle delivery, good academic and professional accreditations as well as track record. As the customer facing Project Manager, your responsibility will be to the external customer, and it is your responsibility to coordinate the activities of functions that are involved at each different stage of the projects pre-sales, solutions design, planning, offshore development, design & configuration, build, test, implementation, Go-Live and rollout.

Your activities are to ensure that each stage and each team are performing, to keep risks and issues in check, and ensure that controls on the project are working communication, configuration and especially change. Any escalations or issues are highlighted immediately, tracked and raised at the appropriate time and in the correct manner, with the appropriate people. The emphasis of this role is the delivery of a software solution to the customers, so whilst it is important to have a business and strategic outlook, it is far more important to understand how a successful product is delivered bringing the required benefit and ROI to the external customer. Please send CVs as word documents only.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a dynamic and proactive senior product analyst to work for a business services Company and a leading provider of transaction processing solutions.  This company operates on a global scale by connecting buyers and sellers in over 160 countries through traditional online and corporate channels.

The Senior Product Analyst is assigned the responsibility for managing global products with significant associated revenue and will also take responsibility for leading other Analysts to ensure coordinated work effort for a given product.

In addition to the existing duties of a Product Analyst the Senior Product Analyst will be expected to represent the company at trade shows, customer events, industry summits and meetings as well as deputising for the Product Manager when required.

This is an exciting and diverse role for a product analyst to work with external customers to provide expertise throughout the product lifecycle to ensure it delivers the benefits of the business case and meets market requirements.

This role, you will be responsible for the design, development and delivery of the product and you must be able to lead and influence across functional team to ensure product meets the market requirements; achieves financial objectives and delivers operational value to the customer.

As the product analyst, you will need to develop the market requirements and articulate product vision in order to brief the technology development teams, customers and industry bodies.

You will be expected to provide competitive analysis, and all costs associated with the designing, development and deployment of the product.
This will require creating and maintaining a product roadmap that can illustrate and communicate product strategy and how this will mature and envelope to provide the customers with operational value.

Moreover, you will be involved in consultation, focus groups, and product expertise and support the commercial sales team to formulate customer acquisition and retention strategies.

Collecting, understanding, and writing the business requirements for the product, and translating these into functional specifications and use cases

To provide the link between the customer, development team and any third party regarding software functionality, throughout the development lifecycle

Day to day analysis and management of change requests in relation to the project plans to ensure agreed deadlines are met

Handling day to day development queries and verbally communicating business rules and requirements in an agile environment

Document workflows and results of business analysis and obtain sign-off from client on the specifications

Ability to perform and assist in UAT

Attend customer briefings, trade and travel industry bodies representing the company and its interests

Developing and writing market requirements documents

Conducting competitive analysis and providing internal and external messaging both written and verbal

Analyzing and writing user scenarios / stories for agile development methodologies

Facilitating the management of small enhancements and monitoring defect status

Provide key contributions to product plan and business case

Develop and deliver key product functionality messages for creation of sales and product marketing collateral

Role Requirements

Experience as a Product Analyst or Product Marketing Manager
Demonstrated success of defining, developing and deploying products
Extensive experience in a job managing product development
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Graduate Bachelor's degree (MBA preferred) or equivalently qualified by experience
Formal training/qualification or demonstrate able experience of new product commercialization
Customer centric thinking and acting
Outstanding communications skills for internal and external audiences
Excellent relationship building skills with a good understanding of different cultures and how to work with them to deliver results, in a global organization.
Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority
Must be able to travel 40% of the time including global travel
Demonstrable track record of analyzing market requirements and defining product requirements
Experience in a software product management role in a global organization, but not essential
Extensive experience within the travel industry

Currently their sector is experiencing an unrivalled period of changing legislation which has led to the development and launch of new industry compliant products and solutions. As such their business is undergoing a period of business change to ensure that their back office operations and processes are capable of supporting not only the existing products but further new products as the legislative landscape continues to change. The right person will need to be intellectually agile as you will be working right across the business including the operations team, IT team, Finance, Technical (legislation subject matter experts), Sales and executive. Working for the executuve you will be required to obtain an intimate understanding of the business, its products, market and business goals.

The right individual will be determined in their approach and need to be experienced in business process reengineering, able to analyse the current 'As Is' environment, how the products are supported now, identify inefficiencies, deficiencies and define the 'To Be' environment, in other words what the new organisational support structure will look like and where required how it can be supported by IT.

In short the role of the Project Manager will be to clearly define the project scope that supports the business goals in collaboration with senior management and stakeholders. You will be required to acquire resources, internal and external, coordinating the efforts of those team members and third-party contractors or consultants in order to deliver projects according to plan.

Degree educated, you should have 10 years+ full lifecycle project management experience and be able to demonstrate where you have delivered successful end to end business change / business process reengineering projects. You should be professionally certified, PRINCE2, APM, PMI, ISEB, etc..

It is not a prerequisite for any applicant but it is highly likely that this role could develop into a permanent opportunity with executive level responsibility. This is an initial 6-12 month contract, accommodation can be provided for the right candidate and return flights to the mainland UK will be provided bi-weekly if required.

The Project Director/Manager will be required to deliver a Private Banking Platform to a Tier 1 banking customer across Europe. This role is a London based role, with travel across mainland Europe and the successful candidate will therefore need to demonstrate flexibility and ability to travel. The successful PM will demonstrate a good understanding of software product delivery, ideally private banking software, and have demonstrable successful track record of project delivery in a vendor environment. You will have worked for vendors/suppliers and understand the complexities around managing software projects with teams based in different locations, have the commercial skills and knowledge to work on the vendor side managing external customers, 3rd parties and internal stakeholders as well as business units with vested interests in successful delivery (sales, marketing, consulting, development, finance, support etc). As the Project Director / Manager, the success and failure of the project is your responsibility as is the relationship that my client has with the customers. It is therefore essential that we identify a Project Director / Manager used to managing a wide range of people from different companies, across geographical boundaries with varying cultural backgrounds and language abilities. This is a London based role with travel across the UK and longer term Europe.

The Project Director / Manager will also have a thorough knowledge and understanding of project management methods, processes, tools and techniques, and this will need to be demonstrable thorough the discussions. My client is looking for someone who understands the fundamentals behind project management, software product delivery, external customer management, full life cycle delivery, good academic and professional accreditations as well as track record. As the customer facing Project Director / Manager, your responsibility will be to the external customer (the bank), and it is your responsibility to coordinate the activities of functions that are involved at each different stage of the projects pre-sales, solutions design, planning, offshore development, design & configuration, build, test, implementation, Go-Live and rollout.

Your activities are to ensure that each stage and each team are performing, to keep risks and issues in check, and ensure that controls on the project are working communication, configuration and especially change. Any escalations or issues are highlighted immediately, tracked and raised at the appropriate time and in the correct manner, with the appropriate people. The emphasis of this role is the delivery of a software solution to the bank, so whilst it is important to have a business and strategic outlook, it is far more important to understand how a successful product is delivered bringing the required benefit and ROI to the external customer. Please send CVs as word documents only.