Project Manager

Project Manager (Austin, TX)

We are seeking a highly experienced and dedicated Project Manager with a strong background in Financial Services, specifically within Capital Markets. This role demands an individual who embodies an ownership mentality, possesses structured thinking, and has a clear bias for clarity. The successful candidate will be accountable for driving project outcomes, navigating complex system boundaries, and ensuring alignment across various stakeholders and engineering teams. This is a critical role for individuals who thrive on enabling engineering while upholding strategic project goals and boundaries.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Planning & Execution: Translate strategic goals into actionable project plans, performing effective decomposition of complex initiatives. Proactively identify, assess, and mitigate project risks throughout the lifecycle. Monitor project progress diligently, identifying and addressing slippage early to ensure timely delivery.
• Stakeholder & Boundary Management: Act as a primary interface between business stakeholders and engineering teams, aligning competing priorities and fostering collaboration. Clearly define project scope, system boundaries (functional and architectural), and ownership to prevent scope creep and misalignment. Manage stakeholder requests by triaging them (in-scope, adjacent, out-of-scope), routing appropriately, coordinating cross-team efforts, or pushing back when necessary. Surface hidden scope expansions and dependencies, ensuring that engineering decisions align with overall project scope and business objectives.
• Leadership & Communication: Maintain composure and provide clear direction under pressure, especially when addressing issues. Facilitate timely decision-making, clearly articulating trade-offs and ensuring all parties understand the rationale. Exhibit relentless follow-through on all tasks and commitments, ensuring commitments are met. Proactively communicate project status, challenges, and successes to all relevant stakeholders, ensuring "no surprises." Manage communication effectively both up (to leadership) and down (to team members).
• Accountability & Drive: Drive accountability across the project team, even without direct authority, ensuring all contributors understand their roles and responsibilities. Continuously reprioritize tasks and objectives based on evolving realities and business needs. Challenge the "why" behind engineering solutions to ensure they align with business goals and project boundaries, while respecting engineering's ownership of the "how."

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Domain Expertise (MUST-HAVE): Extensive experience (8+ years) in Financial Services, with deep domain knowledge in Capital Markets. Understanding of trading lifecycle, market data, regulatory requirements, and financial instruments.
• Core Attributes: Ownership Mentality: Demonstrates full accountability for project outcomes, not just task completion. Structured Thinking: Ability to break down complex problems into manageable, logical parts. Bias for Clarity: Exceptional ability to define scope, roles, and success criteria unambiguously. Calm under pressure, capable of maintaining composure and effectiveness during critical issues. Pragmatic approach, balancing ideal solutions with achievable outcomes.
• Core Skills (MUST-HAVE - Top 3): Planning and Decomposition: Proven ability to convert strategic goals into detailed, actionable project plans. Stakeholder Management: Expert in aligning diverse and often competing priorities among various stakeholders. Risk Management: Proactive and effective identification, assessment, and mitigation of project risks.
• Other Key Skills: Excellent Communication: Clear, structured, and audience-specific communication skills (written and verbal). Decision Facilitation: Skilled in driving timely decisions with clear articulation of trade-offs. Execution Tracking: Strong ability to monitor progress and detect early signs of slippage.
• Key Behaviors: Relentless follow-through on tasks and commitments. Proactive communication with a "no surprises" philosophy. A natural ability to force alignment across disparate stakeholder groups. Effective at managing expectations and communications with both superiors and direct reports/team members. Adept at driving accountability within a team, even without formal authority. Capable of continuous reprioritization based on dynamic project realities.