Project Manager

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.

We are seeking an experienced Project Manager to lead the successful delivery of business and technology change initiatives across the Adviser business. 

Working within a dynamic and evolving delivery environment, you will lead cross-functional teams, collaborate with internal stakeholders and external delivery partners, and ensure projects deliver measurable business value, customer benefit and strategic outcomes. The role requires a versatile delivery professional who is comfortable operating across traditional project delivery approaches and, iterative and product-led delivery models.

You will be accountable for driving delivery from initiation through to implementation and benefits realisation, ensuring initiatives are delivered safely, compliantly, on time and within budget. In addition, you will play a key role in value management and value stream optimisation, helping ensure investment decisions translate into tangible customer, operational and commercial outcomes. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Lead the delivery of projects, workstreams or releases within larger programmes, ensuring agreed scope, time, cost, quality and outcomes are achieved. 

• Apply and champion appropriate project management disciplines, including planning, resource management, scheduling, governance, reporting and RAID management. 

• Establish and maintain effective project governance and delivery structures, ensuring clarity of roles, responsibilities and decision-making. 

• Develop, manage and control project budgets, forecasts and expenditure, ensuring financial performance remains aligned to approved business cases. 

• Build strong relationships with sponsors, stakeholders, customers and delivery partners to ensure delivery meets business needs and maximises value. 

• Drive collaboration across multiple teams, functions and third-party suppliers to successfully deliver complex, interdependent initiatives. 

• Ensure project deliverables meet agreed quality standards and fulfil business and regulatory requirements. 

• Support the development, measurement and optimisation of customer and operational value streams. 

• Track, report and manage project performance, risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies, providing transparent reporting to Programme Boards, Steering Committees and senior leadership. 

• Support benefits realisation activities, ensuring expected business outcomes and value are effectively measured and achieved. 

• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, learning and delivery excellence across the Adviser Change function. 

Skills, Knowledge and Experience;

Essential

• Proven experience delivering complex business and technology change initiatives using both Agile/iterative and Waterfall delivery methodologies.

• Experience managing complex deliveries involving multiple workstreams, teams and third-party suppliers.

• Experience presenting to and working directly with sponsors, governance forums and Steering Committees.

• Ability to rapidly assess complex situations, prioritise effectively and focus teams on the most important outcomes.

• Commercial awareness and the ability to apply a value and customer-focused lens to delivery decisions.

• Experience managing and governing third-party delivery relationships.

• Desirable

• Knowledge of the Life & Pensions industry, particularly platform migration, customer migration, data migration or product transformation programmes.

• Demonstrable experience working within product-led organisations and supporting value stream or outcome-based delivery models.

• Strong commercial and financial management skills, including budget control, forecasting and investment tracking.

• Strong problem-solving and decision-making capability, with the ability to navigate ambiguity and identify practical solutions.

• Experience delivering change within wealth management, adviser platforms, wrap platforms or financial services technology environments.

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the confidence to engage, influence and challenge constructively at all levels of the organisation.

• Experience working within regulated financial services environments.

• Familiarity with outcome-based planning, benefits management and value stream optimisation techniques.

Professional Qualifications 

The following qualifications are desirable: 

• PRINCE2 Practitioner 

• Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) 

• AgilePM 

• Certified Scrum Master (CSM) 

• SAFe Agilist or equivalent Agile certification