Apex Systems
Senior Portfolio Manager
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Role: Senior Portfolio Manager (Payments & Technology Delivery)
Location: Chester, UK (Wrexham Road, Chester, CH4 9QW)
Duration: 18 months
Requirement: Initially onsite 5 days per week, after 6 months 3 days per week (Hybrid)
Start Date: ASAP
Role Overview
We are seeking an experienced Portfolio Manager to oversee and govern a portfolio of strategic technology and payments initiatives, ensuring successful delivery against business objectives, investment priorities, and organisational change goals. The successful candidate will be responsible for portfolio planning, prioritisation, governance, dependency management, and stakeholder alignment across multiple programmes and projects.
The role requires strong strategic leadership, portfolio governance expertise, exceptional stakeholder management skills, and the ability to balance competing priorities across business, technology, architecture, operations, and programme delivery functions. The Portfolio Manager will provide visibility of portfolio performance, capacity, risks, and value realisation while ensuring initiatives remain aligned with enterprise strategy and regulatory requirements.
Key Responsibilities
Portfolio Governance & Oversight
- Lead the governance and oversight of a portfolio of technology and payments-related programmes and projects, ensuring alignment with strategic business objectives.
- Establish and maintain effective portfolio governance frameworks, including steering committees, portfolio reviews, executive reporting, and investment decision forums.
- Provide consolidated portfolio reporting covering delivery health, milestones, risks, dependencies, financial performance, and resource utilisation.
- Monitor portfolio-wide risks, issues, interdependencies, and delivery constraints, ensuring appropriate mitigation and escalation.
- Drive portfolio prioritisation and investment decisions based on strategic objectives, business value, capacity, and risk considerations.
- Ensure all initiatives within the portfolio remain aligned with agreed business outcomes, target operating models, and technology roadmaps.
- Track portfolio performance, benefits realisation, and strategic outcomes, providing insight and recommendations to senior leadership.
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Strategic Stakeholder Management
- Partner with executive sponsors, business leaders, technology executives, product teams, and programme managers to align portfolio priorities with organisational strategy.
- Facilitate decision-making across competing initiatives, balancing business demand, available capacity, risk, and investment considerations.
- Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders and provide trusted advisory support on portfolio planning, delivery performance, and strategic execution.
- Ensure transparent communication of portfolio status, key decisions, risks, investment priorities, and delivery outcomes.
- Support the development and maintenance of portfolio roadmaps and strategic planning activities.
Portfolio Planning & Investment Management
- Lead portfolio planning cycles, ensuring initiatives are appropriately assessed, prioritised, sequenced, and resourced.
- Evaluate business cases, investment proposals, and strategic initiatives to support informed decision-making and portfolio optimisation.
- Maintain visibility of programme and project interdependencies, ensuring delivery plans support enterprise-wide objectives.
- Support portfolio budgeting, financial forecasting, and investment tracking activities.
- Monitor benefits realisation and ensure initiatives deliver measurable business value and expected outcomes.
Enterprise Change & Risk Management
- Ensure portfolio initiatives adhere to enterprise governance, risk management, compliance, and change management standards.
- Oversee portfolio controls, documentation, approvals, and audit readiness across all programmes and projects.
- Work closely with governance, risk, and compliance teams to identify and mitigate portfolio-level risks.
- Ensure appropriate controls and assurance activities are in place to support successful and compliant delivery.
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Resource & Capacity Management
- Oversee portfolio-wide resource planning and capacity management to ensure effective allocation of skills and expertise.
- Work with programme managers, delivery leads, and technology leaders to identify resource constraints and delivery bottlenecks.
- Support workforce planning and prioritisation activities to optimise portfolio delivery outcomes.
- Provide executive visibility into capacity challenges, delivery risks, and resource investment requirements.
Desired Qualifications
Payments Domain Experience
- Strong understanding of the payments industry, payment processing, payment infrastructure, and evolving payment ecosystems.
- Experience overseeing portfolios containing cross-border payments, real-time payments, or payments transformation initiatives.
- Knowledge of ISO 20022 and related payment messaging standards.
- Familiarity with payment data standards, including postal address and regulatory data requirements associated with payments modernisation programmes.
- Experience managing large-scale payment transformation, modernisation, or infrastructure portfolios.
- Understanding of the regulatory, operational, technology, and strategic considerations impacting global payment services.
Portfolio Management Experience
- Proven experience managing complex technology portfolios within financial services, payments, banking, or regulated environments.
- Strong knowledge of portfolio governance frameworks, demand management, prioritisation methodologies, and benefits realisation.
- Experience presenting portfolio performance and investment recommendations to executive leadership and steering committees.
- Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities, strategic roadmaps, resource constraints, and enterprise-wide dependencies.
- Portfolio management certifications such as MoP, PfMP, PPM, MSP, PRINCE2, or equivalent are highly desirable.
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