Program Manager I

Primary Responsibilities:

Program Coordination & Execution 

• Support portfolio, program, and project management activities, ensuring alignment with tech strategy and business objectives.  

• Coordinate program deliverables, ensuring deadlines, budgets, and quality standards are met.  

• Demand planning based on intake/discovery (for technical and product resources) 

• Develop Project Plan, forecast and schedule.  Work with stakeholders to record detailed project requirements, constraints and assumptions to establish project deliverables, using requirement-gathering techniques (e.g. planning sessions, brainstorming, focus groups) and the project charter. 

• Ensure plans for assigned projects include work breakdown, project organization chart, cost/budget and communication, risk, quality and resource plans. 

• Ensure execution of tasks defined in the project plan to achieve the project goals.  Execute all parts of the project plan and manage the budget/forecast.  Monitor and control project work including change controls. 

• Implement approved actions and workarounds required to mitigate project risk events. 

• Improve project team performance by building team cohesiveness, leading, mentoring, training and motivating to facilitate cooperation, ensure project efficiency and boost morale.  Determine and coordinate sharing of resources among constituent projects for overall program benefit. 

• Complete other related duties as assigned. 

Reporting & Analytics

• Track and report on program performance metrics, OKRs, and KPIs to ensure strategic alignment.  

• Maintain dashboards and analytics tools to provide insights on capacity planning, vendor performance, and financial forecasting.  

Communications & Stakeholder Engagement 

• Provide and maintain consistent engagement with key stakeholders 

Risk & Compliance 

• Understand and adhere to the Company’s risk and regulatory standards, policies and controls in accordance with the Company’s Risk Appetite.  Design, implement, maintain and enhance internal controls to mitigate risk on an ongoing basis.  Identify risk-related issues needing escalation to management. 

• Promote an environment that supports and reflects the M&T Bank brand. 

• Maintain M&T internal control standards, including timely implementation of internal and external audit points together with any issues raised by external regulators as applicable. 

Managerial/Supervisory Responsibilities 

• Responsible for oversight of 1 to 2 large initiatives at any given time 

• Indirect management of a team of approximately 10 to 20 business and technology staff. 

Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 8 years’ proven project management experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 12 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 8 years’ proven project management experience.

Proficiency in MS Suite (Advanced Excel, MS project, Teams). 

MS Power Platform (Power Apps Suite) 

Financial Institutional experience (financial services, fintech, or related) 

Experience working on a tech initiative, specifically a data initiative  

Strong knowledge of Agile Methodology 

Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. 

Program Management Professional (PgMP) certification. 

Strong knowledge of project management methodology/disciplines. 

Experienced in leading business driven initiatives with Agile delivery frameworks 

Strong verbal and written communication skills, particularly an ability to negotiate, influence and gain consensus. 

Regularly communicates verbally and in writing with executive management on status of initiatives, in a professional and understandable manner. 

Excellent problem-solving skills. 

Ability to work individually as well as a member of a team. 

Self-motivated, results-driven and well-organized individual. 

Ability to handle multiple tasks and work under time constraints in support of various assignments. 

Ability to function professionally at many different levels (clients, management and peers). 

Strong interpersonal skills are necessary for business partner relationships within and outside the organization. 

The ability to build mutual trust and encourage respect; open to diverse points of view. 

Experience in delivering platforms and software solutions to clients