Front Office Project Manager with Investment Management - contract - London - £750-850 per day inside IR35 - #2147152

Leading investment manager is seeking an experienced and highly organised Project Manager to support the successful delivery of strategic initiatives, technology implementations, operating model changes, and business transformation programmes.

This role will be responsible for leading projects across the full delivery lifecycle, including initiation, scoping, planning, design, execution, testing, implementation, transition to business-as-usual, and project closure. The successful candidate will work closely with business stakeholders, technology teams, investment operations, data teams, external vendors, and senior leadership to ensure projects are well governed, clearly communicated, and delivered in line with agreed scope, timelines, budget, quality standards, and business outcomes.

The role requires a strong project management skillset, with the ability to manage complex workstreams, coordinate cross-functional teams, identify and mitigate risks, drive decisions, and maintain momentum in a fast-paced financial services environment. Experience supporting large-scale platform implementations, particularly BlackRock Aladdin or similar investment management platforms, would be highly valuable.

Primary Responsibilities

Project Planning and Delivery

1. Lead the end-to-end delivery of strategic projects, technology implementations, process improvements, and business change initiatives.
2. Partner with business and technology stakeholders to define project scope, objectives, success criteria, milestones, dependencies, and key deliverables.
3. Develop and maintain detailed project plans, including timelines, activities, owners, dependencies, critical path items, and delivery milestones.
4. Ensure projects are delivered on time, within scope, and within budget, while maintaining appropriate quality and governance standards.
5. Manage project execution across multiple workstreams, ensuring progress is actively tracked and blockers are escalated and resolved in a timely manner.
6. Support project initiation activities, including business case development, delivery approach, resource planning, governance structure, and stakeholder engagement model.
7. Coordinate project closure activities, including lessons learned, benefits tracking, transition to business-as-usual, and completion of project documentation.

Aladdin and Technology Implementation

1. Support the planning and delivery of Aladdin-related implementation activities, including requirements gathering, design coordination, data readiness, system configuration, testing, and go-live preparation.
2. Work with business, technology, data, operations, and external partners to ensure Aladdin implementation activities are clearly defined, sequenced, and aligned to business outcomes.
3. Coordinate key implementation dependencies, including data migration, interfaces, reporting, workflows, user acceptance testing, operational readiness, access management, and production cutover planning.
4. Partner with stakeholders to document current-state and future-state processes, identify gaps, and support the definition of target operating models.
5. Track and manage risks, issues, assumptions, and dependencies associated with Aladdin implementation or enhancement projects.
6. Support communication across internal teams and external providers to ensure clear ownership, timely decisions, and consistent understanding of delivery expectations.
7. Ensure testing plans, defect management, user readiness activities, and implementation checkpoints are effectively managed and reported.

Governance, Risk, and Controls

1. Establish and maintain appropriate project governance, including working groups, steering committees, reporting cadence, decision forums, and escalation routes.
2. Prepare project status reporting for senior management, including progress updates, risks, issues, dependencies, milestones, decisions required, and changes to scope or timeline.
3. Maintain robust project documentation, including plans, RAID logs, action trackers, decision logs, status reports, governance materials, and implementation readiness checklists.
4. Identify, assess, and manage project risks and issues, ensuring clear owners, mitigation plans, target dates, and escalation points are in place.
5. Manage change control processes, ensuring any changes to scope, timelines, cost, or deliverables are clearly documented, assessed, approved, and communicated.
6. Ensure delivery is aligned with internal standards, audit expectations, control requirements, and governance frameworks.

Stakeholder and Communication Management

1. Build and maintain strong relationships with business sponsors, senior stakeholders, technology partners, vendors, and project team members.
2. Act as a central coordination point across business, technology, operations, and external parties to ensure alignment and effective delivery.
3. Facilitate project meetings, workshops, decision forums, and governance sessions, ensuring clear agendas, outputs, actions, and follow-ups.
4. Communicate project updates clearly and concisely to different audiences, including executives, delivery teams, functional leads, and end users.
5. Translate complex project information into clear, actionable summaries that highlight progress, risks, decisions, and next steps.
6. Drive accountability across project teams by ensuring actions, owners, due dates, and dependencies are clearly understood and tracked.

Team Leadership and Delivery Discipline

1. Lead cross-functional project teams, including business representatives, technology teams, data teams, change management, operations, compliance, risk, and external partners.
2. Provide clear direction to project team members and ensure alignment against agreed priorities and milestones.
3. Foster a collaborative, delivery-focused culture with strong ownership, transparency, and accountability.
4. Proactively identify delivery challenges and work with stakeholders to remove blockers, resolve conflicts, and maintain project momentum.
5. Apply structured project management methods while remaining flexible and pragmatic based on project complexity and stakeholder needs.
6. Support continuous improvement of delivery practices, templates, tools, governance processes, and project management standards.

Qualifications and Experience

Required Experience