Senior Project Manager

The ZCS Senior Project Manager will lead and manage one or more specific implementation projects, often with complex multi-workstream delivery and transformative customer change. This will include the responsibility for the customer relationship, project plans, objectives, deliverables and milestones, risks and issues, status reporting and governance and the budget and P&L for medium-large (often £300k+) projects and commercial margin of the delivery.

This role will work closely with the ZCS Engagement Director, Implementation Consultants, Test Managers/Leads, Service Readiness and Zellis Product & Technology colleagues, and will partner with customer Project and Test managers to achieve the relevant delivery milestones on time, at the highest level of quality and on budget. This role will also involve interfacing with Customer and Zellis Exec to present the ongoing status, risks and issues on projects under their governance, and support our continuous improvement initiatives to take lessons learned and feed them back into our ZCS programme and project methodology.

Your Key Responsibilities Will Be:

• Partnering with the customer Project and Test Managers to develop a "One Team" approach to end-to-end delivery to ensure that all project and change activities are delivered on time, at the highest level of quality and on budget.
• Developing, agreeing, and maintaining a detailed project plan with the customer, based on the Zellis standard project Implementation methodology, including deliverables, milestones and entry and exit criteria as relevant.
• Managing and coordinating all project or change activities so that they are undertaken in accordance with the project plan, including successfully transitioning the service to a live state with ongoing ownership from the Application Support team.
• Working with the Implementation Director or Engagement Directors, managing the project and change KPIs, status reporting, commercial margin and budget and P&L.
• Reporting on the ongoing performance of the Project to the customer and Zellis stakeholders, including Project Steering Groups, Zellis ZCS Implementation Director and Zellis Exec as required.
• Managing the scheduling, preparation and facilitation of project or change governance meetings (including milestone or stage gate reviews and sign off meetings) and to inform project stakeholders of progress.
• Managing ongoing project or change risks and issues (including mitigation and where possible resolution), and ensuring that they are reported and escalated to the Engagement Directors and Implementation Director in a timely fashion.
• Identifying and recommending ongoing continuous improvement proposals to the overall ZCS Implementation methodology, based on lessons learned, to ensure it continues to follow best practice and evolves with improved customer experience, automation, innovation and the latest agile or iterative delivery methodology in a customer friendly way.
• Onboarding, managing, coaching and supporting all project resources in executing their activities and acting as the point of escalation for any execution issues beyond the relevant workstreams.
• Facilitating the provision of software, infrastructure, supporting tools and appropriate resources for each phase of the project to ensure all pre-requisites and ongoing support is in place.

Skills & Experience:

• Experience leading on medium-large scale Implementation, software, advisory or Managed Services customers with medium-large scale employee volumes (over 10,000 EE’s and £300k budgets).
• Managing & owning project KPIs, objectives, financial measures, planning, resourcing, deliverables, change controls and successful outcomes with internal and customer stakeholders (including C‑Suite level with Engagement Director support).
• Acting as project lead across complex projects, including over multiple workstreams (cross customer, third party and internal cross functional).
• Planning, scheduling and delivering work for self and others to meet given objectives, outcomes and KPIs; monitors self and others against agreed delivery timelines.
• Understands, applies and advises appropriate methods, tools, applications and processes (driving continuous improvement of standard operating processes).
• Significant Influence within areas of multi‑specialism (internally & with customers).
• Partners, consults and facilitates appropriate collaboration between stakeholders (internally and externally).
• Follows an expert approach to identifying and resolving highly complex risks and issues.
• Anticipates and raises business or reputationally impacting risks and issues to enable them to be mitigated.
• Defines problem statements and completes root cause analysis for risks and issues.
• Act as a point of escalation, managing difficult conversations.
• Follows set development path for their role/multi‑specialism.
• Takes the initiative to develop skills and knowledge by identifying appropriate development opportunities.
• Maintains an awareness of developing practices and their application and takes responsibility for driving own development.
• Contributes to the development of others.
• Experience working in the HR & Payroll software, financial technology/services or outsourcing industry (preferred).
• A positive and curious mindset for AI‑first working, embracing the impact that 'human+AI' can bring to the world. You’ll be adept at using AI tools, able to demonstrate examples of where you’ve utilised AI to improve your output or delivery efficiency, and you embrace the opportunity to learn more about how AI can drive enhancements in the way we work.

Benefits & Culture:

At Zellis we create market‑leading HR & Payroll products and services, to power exceptional employee experiences so that you and your people do better. Our multi‑award‑winning products pay over five million employees a year, with almost half (42%) of the FTSE 100, 50% of the top retailers and 30% of the top universities in the UK & Ireland as customers, making us the largest provider of Payroll and HR software and managed services.

Our vision is to be the clear leader in pay, reward, analytics, and people experiences. We’re passionate about creating an environment where people want to join, belong to, and be part of a progressive organisation. Our values, which were defined with input from all of our 2,000 colleagues, we live and breathe every day:

• Unstoppable together.
• Always learning.
• Make it count.
• Think scale.

Our people are critical to our ongoing success; we’re proud of our inclusive culture that gives you the platform to grow, challenge the status quo and play a crucial role in further enhancing our market position as the leading provider of HR & Payroll software and services. With Zellis you’ll have the chance to stretch and challenge yourself in an environment that’s varied, flexible and hugely supportive.

We also love to reward and recognise our brilliant colleagues. As part of your benefits package, you’ll receive:

• A competitive base salary plus cash car allowance.
• 25 days annual leave, plus your birthday off and the opportunity to buy additional holiday.
• Private medical insurance.
• Life assurance 4x salary.
• Enhanced pension scheme with company contributions up to 8.5%.
• A huge range of additional flexible benefits across financial & personal wellbeing, lifestyle & leisure.