Essential Consulting
Senior Project / Programme Manager Technology Decommissioning
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Senior Project / Programme Manager Technology Decommissioning / Demise
£600-£650 per day - inside IR35
Sheffield or Birmingham - Hybrid
Initial contract with good potential for longevity
We are looking for an experienced Senior Project / Programme Manager to join a major infrastructure transformation programme within the Chief Technology Office of a Tier 1 global bank.
The wider programme involves significant infrastructure modernisation and upgrade activity across a large and complex technology estate, including legacy and mainframe environments. As part of this transformation, there is a substantial programme of work focused on the demise and decommissioning of legacy technology and infrastructure as services are upgraded, migrated, or replaced.
Essential experience
Candidates MUST have significant experience leading large-scale technology demise/decommissioning programmes.
This is a specialist requirement. We are not looking for a general Project or Programme Manager who has simply had some exposure to decommissioning as part of a wider migration programme. You should be able to demonstrate previous ownership of significant technology decommissioning, legacy retirement, or estate rationalisation activity at scale, taking technology through to actual retirement and closure.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead large-scale technology demise, decommissioning, and legacy retirement activity across a complex enterprise technology estate.
- Take ownership of the end-to-end demise lifecycle, driving legacy technology through to successful retirement and closure.
- Work across infrastructure, applications, architecture, engineering, and business teams to establish the scope, status, and ownership of technology targeted for demise.
- Identify and manage complex technical, application, data, and business dependencies which may prevent or delay decommissioning.
- Establish clear delivery plans, milestones, ownership, exit criteria, and governance across multiple demise workstreams.
- Coordinate prerequisite activity including migrations, data retention/archive, service transition, and technical remediation.
- Work closely with Engineers, Architects, Application Owners, and other technical SMEs to understand and resolve barriers to decommissioning.
- Drive accountability across technical and business teams, challenging where activity has stalled and ensuring actions have clear owners and timescales.
- Ensure appropriate technical, operational, risk, and control requirements are satisfied prior to shutdown.
- Manage plans, RAID, dependencies, and governance, providing clear visibility of progress and blockers to senior stakeholders.
- Drive multiple concurrent workstreams through to completion within a large and complex technology environment.
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Experience Required
- Significant previous experience leading large-scale technology demise, decommissioning, or legacy retirement programmes essential.
- Strong background within enterprise infrastructure and complex legacy technology environments.
- Experience managing the retirement of technology at scale, potentially including applications, infrastructure, servers, platforms, data centres, and other legacy technology assets.
- Strong understanding of the challenges involved in technology demise, including legacy dependencies, unclear ownership, data requirements, migration prerequisites, operational risk, and exit criteria.
- Demonstrable experience taking programmes beyond migration or replacement and driving legacy technology through to actual retirement/decommissioning.
- Experience of major technology estate rationalisation, infrastructure decommissioning, data-centre exit, or legacy platform retirement would be particularly relevant.
- Strong Project/Programme Management capability across multiple concurrent technical workstreams and complex dependencies.
- Comfortable working directly with technical teams and getting into the detail required to understand and resolve delivery blockers.
- Strong stakeholder management, governance, RAID, planning, and senior-level reporting experience.
- Proactive and self-sufficient, with the ability to take ownership of complex delivery and drive it forward without significant day-to-day direction.
- Previous banking or large-scale financial services technology experience is strongly preferred.
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Location & Contract
The role can be based from either Sheffield or Birmingham, with hybrid working requiring approximately 23 days per week onsite.
Rate: £600-£650 per day via umbrella (inside IR35).
The initial assignment is expected to be approximately 46 months, with good potential for longer-term continuity.
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