Senior Program Manager
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Summary
Senior client-facing program manager who owns Napier AI's largest enterprise delivery programs, especially Tier 1 bank implementations of its AI-powered AML/financial crime compliance platform — running governance, change control, risk, and go-live. Requires deep AML/KYC domain experience and 12+ years leading enterprise SaaS delivery.
Imagine catching criminals before they strike - that’s exactly what Napier’s AI-powered platform does! By analysing transactions and customers in real time, Napier AI’s technology empowers financial institutions to spot suspicious activity, like money laundering, and stops it in its tracks.
Napier AI’s technology works like a digital detective, combining AI with smart analytics to outthink criminals and protect people’s money from becoming criminal proceeds. It’s not just about stopping crime - it’s about making the financial world safer and more trustworthy for everyone.
Collaboration, innovation and wonderful people are just some of the reasons to bring your career to Napier. Our culture is shaped by our core values that promote equality, creativity, and opportunity in everything we do.
The Role: Senior Program Manager
You will lead Napier AI's most complex and highest-value enterprise delivery programs including Tier 1 bank implementations. From there you will take portfolio leadership of Napier's strategic Tier 1 accounts as we scale that tier of the business.
These programs operate under regulatory and contractual hard deadlines, multi-party governance (bank, Napier, hyperscaler, third-party integrators), and executive-level scrutiny on both sides. You will be brought in at critical phases, expected to establish authority quickly, restore delivery confidence where needed, hold the commercial line, and land go-live cleanly.
This is a senior, customer-facing role that carries programs accountability end to end. You will be the single senior Napier delivery point of contact with the client's program director and executive sponsor. You will be trusted internally to hold Product, Engineering, Platform, and Professional Services to their commitments to ensure customers realise value from their investment in Napier's platform.
Program Leadership
- Own end-to-end delivery of Napier's largest enterprise programs, including Tier 1 National and European bank engagements
- Establish and run program governance: steering committees, executive status reviews, RAID discipline, decision logs
- Define and defend the acceptance criteria for go-live and any regulatory or contractual milestone
- Coordinate delivery across Napier's Professional Services, Product, Engineering, Platform, Support, and Customer Success functions
Client and Executive Stakeholder Management
- Act as the single senior Napier delivery contact with the client's program director, delivery leads, and executive sponsors
- Chair steering committees and executive status forums with authority and credibility
- Prevent client escalations bypassing program governance
- Represent Napier at client executive escalations, industry regulator interactions where relevant, and third-party (hyperscaler, SI) governance
Commercial Governance
- Own program P&L, forecast, and margin
- Run formal change control against every scope movement, defect classification, and delivery obligation
- Defend Napier against uncapped commitments, one-sided release triggers, and unbounded acceptance criteria
- Hold the defect versus change request line: no product commitment leaves Napier without your sign-off
- Escalate commercial and contractual risk to the CCO before it becomes a client-facing position
Delivery Excellence and Risk Management
- Maintain the end-to-end program plan, dependency map, and critical path
- Own the risk register and drive mitigations with named accountable owners
- Establish and maintain go/no-go readiness assessment against agreed criteria
- Drive continuous improvement in Napier's delivery methodology from evidence in the field
Third-Party Regulatory Instruments
- Manage the operational side of any escrow, source-code deposit, or equivalent regulatory instrument on your programs, working with Napier Legal, Engineering, and the third-party agent
- Manage client expectations on trigger events, deposit content, and verification cycles
Customer Outcomes and Transition
- Ensure customers achieve successful implementation, adoption, and business value realisation
- Manage a clean transition from delivery into Customer Success and Support with complete documentation and no orphaned commitments
Essential
- 12+ years leading large-scale enterprise software delivery programs, with at least 5 years at senior program director or equivalent level
- Direct financial crime compliance domain experience: AML, KYC, Transaction Monitoring, Sanctions Screening, or Case Management platforms. Not adjacent, not learned on the job during a stint - deep and current
- Delivered at least one enterprise implementation into a Tier 1 or systemic bank in the UK, EU, or US, chairing steering committees at C-1 level
- Proven turnaround experience: taken over a live enterprise program mid-flight, restored client confidence, re-baselined credibly, and landed a successful outcome
- Cloud-based enterprise SaaS platform delivery experience, ideally including hyperscaler-hosted environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP)
- Multi-vendor program experience across client, primary vendor, hyperscaler, and system integrator
- Strong commercial and contractual instincts: has run defensive change control, held scope, defended margin, and defeated attempts to reclassify enhancements as defects
- Experience of programs with regulatory or contractual hard deadlines (go/no-go gates, DORA, PRA/FCA supervisory dates, or equivalent)
- Presence and credibility at C-1 and C-suite client levels
Highly Desirable
- Experience of escrow, source-code deposit, or equivalent third-party regulatory instruments in a live client engagement
- Experience across multiple geographic regions (EMEA, Americas, APAC)
- Program management certifications (MSP, PgMP, PMP, Prince2) - useful, but not a substitute for the experience above
- Experience in Private Equity-backed software companies operating to a defined value creation plan
About You
You bring calm authority and structured judgement to programs under pressure. You are equally comfortable in a technical defect triage, a commercial change control meeting, and a bank executive steering committee. You know when to push and when to protect, and you are willing to hold uncomfortable positions internally to protect the commercial and delivery outcome
You do not need consensus to act. You do need clarity of accountability, direct access to executive decision-making, and the trust to run your program.
