Programme Manager - Edinburgh

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:

• Interactive investor, the UK’s second largest direct-to-consumer investment platform, enables individuals in the UK to plan, save and invest in the way that works for them.
• Our Adviser business provides financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers, enabling them to create value for their customers.
• Our investments business is a specialist asset manager that focuses on areas where we have both strength and scale to capitalise on the key themes shaping the market, through either public markets or alternative asset classes.

About the Department

Our Adviser business provides comprehensive financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers. This includes our award-winning open-architecture platforms, Wrap and Elevate. The Adviser Change team is at the forefront of our business transformation, supporting the development of these platforms as well as driving the broader change agenda for Aberdeen Adviser business.

About the Role

As a Programme Manager within the Adviser Change team, you will lead a cross-functional team to sustain and radically transform our end-to-end Adviser business. This is an exciting opportunity to drive the successful delivery of strategic projects that shape the future of our platform solutions. You will be reporting to the Head of Delivery and will operate within a matrix-based delivery structure, coordinating horizontal delivery work-streams and vertical transition states. Your role will be essential in ensuring the successful delivery of complex change programmes, on time, within scope, and on budget.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead overall programme delivery, including constituent projects, work-streams, and releases, ensuring adherence to time, budget, and scope.
• Champion programme and project management disciplines, including planning, resourcing, scheduling, monitoring, reporting, and managing risks, issues, and dependencies.
• Develop an effective programme organisation structure with clear roles and responsibilities, managing day-to-day activities of assignees.
• Oversee programme budget and expenditure management.
• Ensure quality delivery outcomes for each project/release, ensuring all relevant standards are met.
• Report and present programme status to Steering Group, senior management, and stakeholders.
• Drive high performance within the Programme & Project Management team by mentoring and motivating Project Managers.
• Foster a professional, collegiate workplace, engaging with colleagues to create a positive working environment.

About the Candidate

Qualifications & Experience – Essential

• Track record of large-scale programme or project delivery in Financial Services – ideally in Wealth Management.
• Experience of delivering both technical and business change is key.
• Third party delivery experience – you will have extensive experience delivering through third party partnerships.
• Commercial awareness, understanding of how to apply a commercial lens to discussions and decisions.

Qualifications & Experience - Desirable

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills – you will need to directly influence sponsors, business leaders and chair Steering Group meetings; experience at presenting at that level and having difficult but constructive conversations is important.
• Delivery – evidence of successful/adaptable use of different methodologies across Platforms within Financial Services.
• Dynamic and proactive – ability to positively drive your team to deliver with success.
• Problem solving - ability to understand the challenges the team are facing and help them successfully find the route to resolution.
• Ability to quickly assess a situation and apply critical thinking to determine next steps and priority tasks.
• Management of complex interdependent deliveries across multiple workstreams and vendors.

Relevant Project / Programme / Portfolio / PMO Management qualification(s) e.g. PRINCE2; MSP; MoP; P3O.

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.

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.