Senior Project Manager – Edinburgh

Job Description

At Aberdeen, our ambition is to be the UK’s leading Wealth & Investments group.

Strengthening talent and culture is one of our strategic priorities. We strive to make Aberdeen a great place to work so that we can attract and retain the industry’s best talent.

Our people put our stakeholders at the heart of everything they do by helping us to make a positive difference to the lives of our clients, customers, colleagues, shareholders, and society.

We are focused on growing our direct and advised wealth platforms and repositioning our specialist asset management business to meet client demand. We are committed to providing excellent client service, supported by leading technology and talent.

Aberdeen comprises three businesses, interactive investor (ii), Investments, and Adviser, each of which focuses on meeting and adapting to our clients’ evolving needs.

This role sits in our Adviser business which provides financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers, enabling them to bring value for their businesses and their clients. The Adviser Change team is a specialised function supporting the development and transformation of Aberdeen’s award winning open-architecture platforms; Wrap and Elevate; as well as the broader change agenda of Aberdeen’s Adviser business.

As a Senior Project Manager, you will report into the Programme Management team and will lead a cross-functional team of change professionals to both sustain and radically transform our end-to-end Adviser business.

Key Responsibilities;

• Responsibility for a large project, workstream(s), or release within a programme, ensuring delivery is to time, budget and quality

• Applies and champions the appropriate project management discipline, i.e. planning, resourcing, scheduling, monitoring, reporting and risk, assumption, issue and dependency management

• Establishes an effective project organisation structure

• Responsible for the development and management of budget and expenditure within their workstreams / projects

• Responsibility for managing relationships with stakeholders (including Exec Stakeholders) and key customers to ensure delivery meets requirements

• Responsible for setting and managing the quality of deliverables for projects ensuring that appropriate standards are applied

• Ensure the delivered workstream / project meets the needs of the business as specified in the original requirements and that the agreed quality standards have been met

• Responsible for reporting and presenting on workstream / project status to the Programme, Steering Committee, stakeholders (including Exec Stakeholders) and senior management as required

Qualifications & Experience – Essential

• Track record of large-scale project delivery in Financial Services – ideally in Wealth Management/Investments/Pensions

• Third party delivery experience – have extensive experience delivering through third party partnerships

• Demonstrated strong project governance and budget management, with accountability for maintaining financial control, governance discipline, and transparent reporting to senior stakeholders

• Strong dependency management across multiple workstreams

Qualifications & Experience – Desirable

• Experienced in managing complex interdependent deliveries across multiple workstreams and vendors

• Experience of delivering both technical and business change

• Commercial awareness, understanding of how to apply a commercial lens to discussions and decisions

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills with experience presenting at a senior level and having difficult but constructive conversations with senior stakeholders as this role works directly with sponsors and chair Steering Committees

• Problem solving – ability to understand the challenges their team are facing and help them find the route to resolution

• Ability to quickly assess a situation and determine the correct next steps and priority tasks for the team to focus on

• Relevant Project / Programme / Portfolio / PMO Management qualification(s) e.g., PRINCE2

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire. One of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our benefits

There’s more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported.

When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around. This includes 40 days’ annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance-based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits – including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount portal. You can read more about our benefits here.

Our business

Enabling our clients to be better investors drives everything we do. Our business is structured around three distinct areas – our vectors of growth – focused on our clients’ changing needs. You can find out more about what we do here.

An inclusive way of working

Whatever way you like to work, if you have the talent and commitment to join our team, we’d like to hear from you.

At Aberdeen we’ve adopted a ‘blended working’ approach. This approach combines the benefits of face-to-face collaboration, coaching and connecting in our offices with the flexibility of working from home. It enables colleagues to find a balance that works for their roles, their teams, our clients and our business.

An inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives drive our actions, is at the core of who we are and what we do. If you need assistance with your application, or a reasonable adjustment to your interview arrangements – for example, because you are neurodivergent, or have a physical, sensory, cognitive, mental, visible or invisible disability – please let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment.  We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance.  We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.

If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.