Senior Program Manager

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Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose - to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

Open to all locations in Europe.

What's it all about?

The Senior Program Manager is an important, high-profile role within Visa Europe, and is primarily accountable for leading a portfolio of diverse European strategic initiatives sponsored by the Europe Leadership Team, from government / regulatory driven through to strategic commercial initiatives. Supporting the organisation in meeting its strategic objectives through the shaping and leadership in execution of cross-functional strategic initiatives. Strengthening Visa's cross-functional delivery capabilities and driving the development and adoption of best working practices across Europe.

The portfolio of strategic initiatives this role will manage will be diverse, reflecting the breadth and nature of Visa Europe's strategy, and is expected to include government/regulatory (predominantly), commercial (e.g. new product launch), transformational, technology, financial, and client initiatives. Occasional travel to other locations may also be required to support delivery of the role's wider strategic change portfolio.

What we expect of you, day to day.

• Leading and orchestrating a portfolio of strategic initiatives, shaping and delivering them to an agreed scope, timeline, budget, and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
• Collaborating and sustaining high-trust relationships with stakeholders at all levels of the organisation
• Leading the identification and shaping of nascent ideas, and translating into tangible outcomes that drive significant strategic and transformative value to our business and clients
• Leading, motivate and bring together cross-functional teams to deliver the above strategic outcomes, managing competing priorities, to drive critical path delivery
• Promoting transparency and accountability for execution of deliverables and business outcomes, and providing timely, clear, insight-rich and audience-aware communications and progress reporting
• Proactively managing and mitigating initiative dependencies, issues and risks
• Championing initiative management best practice
• Leading the establishment and ongoing growth of high-performance team environment
• Identifying opportunities for process improvement and efficiency gains
• Developing and maintaining initiative documentation, plans and reports

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Qualifications

For this role, the essential key skills are:

• Strategic change leadership experience is essential, with a proven track record in planning, executing, orchestrating and successfully closing strategic initiatives with minimal supervision, demonstrating an unwavering passion for execution excellence, noting that this role goes significantly beyond PMO, with the successful role holder expected to lead and orchestrate strategic initiatives in a content-rich way (not simply administer the governance / processes of a project for example).
• Intellectually curious, able to interchangeably think and operate at all levels of an organisation, from executive and strategic through to more granular operational.
• Extensive experience of working in a fast-paced changing global matrix organisation.
• Brings and encourages diversity of thought and experience, proactively seeking new perspectives to solve complex problems, with a keen analytical eye for detail and equally strong strategic thinking skills, ensuring recommendations are supported by robust evidence to inform high quality decision-making.
• Able to see the bigger picture, connecting the dots to proactively identify key risks and issues.
• Prepared to ask challenging questions, fostering a deeper understanding and facilitating effective problem solving.
• Cool and calm under pressure with a high level of resilience, comfortable working in environments with high levels of ambiguity, with high integrity, IQ and EQ, and an authentic and inclusive style that brings gravitas and symbolises the Visa leadership principles.
• Deeply experienced in establishing and growing high-trust and high-performance relationships and team environments.
• Tremendous oral and written communication skills, able to craft compelling communications in short time frames with editorial prowess.
• Strong commercial acumen, with a background of having shaped and led large-scale and transformative strategic initiatives and teams with minimal supervision.
• Highly organised, structured and resourceful, bringing clarity, focus and energy to initiative execution. Subject matter and solution orientated, with a pragmatic, 'can do' approach, with experience of delivering through others. Exceptional facilitation skills (written and oral).
• A qualification in an industry recognised change methodology, e.g. PMI PMP, APM, Scrum.Org, SAFe, Prince2

Desirable skills / qualifications include:

• Experience of working in the regulatory space and/or with Regulators is highly desirable, but not essential
• Experience of successfully applying agile delivery methodologies in a change leadership context is highly desirable
• Payments experience is desirable, but not essential
• A high-level understanding of the regulatory environment and current regulations in payments is desirable, but not essential
• Importantly, we do consider potential. As such, even if you are not yet equipped with all the experiences listed above, fear not! We are ready to invest in you and help you become the best you can be. All roles at Visa offer compelling career growth opportunities

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.