Pega Programme Manager

Role Summary The Pega Program Manager owns end-to-end delivery of the customer's Pega workbench program over 8 months. Sitting on the customer side, this person represents the business's interests to the implementation partner or SI, Pega Professional Services, and internal IT teams. They ensure the solution is delivered on time, within budget, and in line with business outcomes, and that it is adopted by end users. This is a governance, stakeholder, and delivery-assurance role, not a hands-on development role. Strong Pega literacy is needed to challenge vendors credibly. 2. Key Responsibilities Program Planning and Governance

• Define the program charter, scope, objectives, success metrics, and benefits case with sponsors.
• Build and maintain the integrated program plan, covering discovery, design, build sprints, SIT/UAT, performance testing, go-live, and hypercare.
• Establish governance: steering committee, weekly program board, sprint reviews, and a design authority.
• Own the RAID log (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) and drive timely escalation and resolution.
• Maintain the program roadmap, release plan, and change calendar. Stakeholder and Relationship Management
• Act as the single point of accountability between business, IT, the SI/vendor, and Pega.
• Run regular engagement with executive sponsors, process owners, operations leaders, and frontline user representatives.
• Translate business priorities into delivery priorities and manage competing demands.
• Manage expectations and communicate progress, risks, and decisions clearly at all levels. Delivery Oversight (Pega-Specific)
• Oversee Agile/Scrum delivery using Pega's Agile Studio or Jira, including backlog health, sprint planning, and velocity.
• Ensure delivery follows Pega Express methodology and Pega Guardrails (target compliance score, no guardrail violations left unjustified).
• Ensure the Center of Excellence (CoE) standards for reusability, naming, rule-set structure, and application layering are followed.
• Coordinate environment strategy (Dev, QA, UAT, Pre-Prod, Prod), deployment pipelines, and Pega Deployment Manager/CI-CD. Commercial and Financial Management
• Own the program budget, forecast, and variance reporting.
• Manage vendor contracts, SOWs, change requests, and milestone-based payments.
• Validate vendor invoices against delivered work and acceptance criteria.
• Track Pega licensing, cloud subscription, and infrastructure costs. Integration, Data, and Security
• Coordinate with enterprise architecture, security, infrastructure, and data teams on integrations with core systems (CRM, ERP, core platforms, document management, identity providers).
• Ensure compliance with security, privacy, and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, SOC 2, industry-specific standards).
• Oversee data migration planning, where applicable. Change Management and Adoption
• Partner with the change/training lead on communications, training plans, super-user networks, and readiness assessments.
• Track adoption and benefits realisation post go-live (handle time, SLA adherence, error reduction, user satisfaction).
• Support transition to BAU, including knowledge transfer and support model handover to the customer's Pega CoE.

3. Key Deliverables

• Program charter, business case, and benefits tracking plan
• Integrated program plan and roadmap
• Governance framework and RACI
• Monthly steering committee reports
• RAID log and escalation records
• Budget forecast and financial reports
• Vendor SOW/change control records
• Test strategy and go-live readiness assessment
• Training and adoption plan
• Hypercare and BAU transition plan
• Close-out report with lessons learned

4. Required Qualifications and Experience Essential

• 15+ years in IT program or project management, with 5+ years delivering Pega low-code platform programs
• Proven track record delivering at least two end-to-end Pega implementations (case management, customer service, or operations workbench)
• Strong working knowledge of Pega Platform concepts: case management, data model, UI, integrations, guardrails, and deployment
• Experience managing SI/vendor partners from the customer side, including commercial and performance management
• Hands-on experience with Agile at scale (Scrum, SAFe, or hybrid) and Pega Express
• Excellent stakeholder management at executive and operational levels
• Strong financial management and contract/SOW governance skills Desirable
• PMP, PRINCE2, PgMP, SAFe Program Consultant, or equivalent
• Pega Certified Business Architect (CPBA), or Pega Certified Pega Cloud Professional
• Experience in an insurance industry
• Familiarity with Pega Cloud, Constellation architecture, and Pega GenAI capabilities
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps, and automated testing in Pega

5. Core Competencies

• Strategic thinking with disciplined execution
• Credible technical challenge without being a developer
• Clear, concise communication, written and verbal
• Negotiation and conflict resolution
• Risk-based decision making
• Leadership without direct authority across matrixed teams
• Resilience and calm under delivery pressure

6. Working Relationships Internal: Executive sponsor, business process owners, operations and contact-centre leaders, enterprise architecture, IT infrastructure, security, data, procurement, legal, finance, HR/training, internal Pega CoE External: System integrator, Pega Professional Services, Pega account team, third-party integration vendors