IT Project Manager - Energy / Commodities - New York
Our client is a major commodity trader based in New York. We are recruiting a Project Manager with strong experience in commodity trading and financial services (ideally with middle and back-office exposure). The role requires strong project management fundamentals, a pragmatic hands-on approach, and the ability to deliver end-to-end in a lean, fast-paced environment.
Key Responsibilities:
- Own end-to-end project delivery from initiation through closure, including scope, plan, schedule, budget, quality, risks, issues, dependencies
- Mobilise projects quickly by confirming outcomes and success measures, establishing governance and RACI
- Build and maintain strong relationships across Trading, Operations, Risk, Finance, Business Change and all relevant IT teams
- Manage delivery to plan, including resource coordination, dependency management, RAID management, budget tracking, and stakeholder communication
- Maintain a single source of truth for project status, with succinct, executive-ready reporting and a 'one team, one voice' approach.
- Surface risks and issues early, supported by options, facts and data-led recommendations
- Control project financials, including forecasting and tracking costs and benefits, managing change impacts, and keeping spend aligned to approved plan.
- Manage third-party vendors and delivery partners, including statements of work, acceptance criteria, milestone tracking, deliverables and change control.
- Lead delivery teams and ways of working by setting pace and standards, coaching contributors, and modelling pragmatic project management practice.
Experience:
- Significant IT project management experience, ideally 15+ years, with a strong track record in commodity trading and/or financial services environments
- Good understanding of trade lifecycle processes, with strong exposure to middle- and back-office functions (Risk, Finance, Treasury, Settlements, Physical Operations).
- Good understanding of core IT trading applications disciplines (ETRM) / exposure to at least one ETRM (Endur, Allegro, Aspect, custom build)
- Experience leading complex projects in global environments / diverse stakeholders
- Experience managing external software vendors and delivery partners to firm outcomes in lean, hands-on environments.
- Experience delivering projects in Agile environments
- Experience using Jira for project delivery
Essential Skills:
- Strong project management discipline across planning, scheduling, RAID, dependency management, financial control and change control.
- Autonomous and outcome-focused, comfortable working in ambiguity and applying best practice pragmatically rather than as box-ticking.
- Strong interpersonal and influencing skills, with the ability to manage demanding stakeholders across multiple locations and functions.
- Executive-ready communication skills, with concise written and verbal updates tailored to business, IT and senior leadership audiences.
- Confident designing and facilitating effective Steering Committees and working with senior stakeholders, including CIO, CRO, CFO and Heads of Function.
- Calm under pressure / strong team player / good ethics
- Willing and able to be hands-on when required, including support for analysis, testing, UAT
- Skilled user of Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Project and Microsoft Office tools, including Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
- PRINCE2 or PMP qualificatiion