Senior Program Manager - CEO Office

What’s it all about?

The Senior Program Manager is an important, high-profile role within the Europe CEO office and is primarily accountable for

1. Leading a portfolio of European strategic initiatives sponsored by the Europe Leadership Team.

2. Supporting the organisation in meeting its strategic objectives through the shaping and leadership in execution of cross-functional strategic initiatives.

3. Strengthening Visa’s cross-functional delivery capabilities and driving the development and adoption of best practices across Europe. 

The portfolio of strategic initiatives this role will manage is diverse, reflecting the breadth and nature of the Europe strategy, and is expected to include commercial (e.g. managing a major RFP or new product launch), regulatory, transformational, technology, financial, and client initiatives.

The primary initiative that this role will be responsible for managing in the first 18 months is regulatory-driven, and will require regular travel to Frankfurt, Germany.  Occasional travel to other European locations will 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

• 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 and motivating 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 environments

• 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.

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.
•Cool and calm under pressure with a high level of resilience, comfortable
working in environments with high levels of ambiguity, with high integrity 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 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.

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.