Senior Project Manager

Role summary

Delivery, finance, and change governance

• Lead complex IT projects and programs; manage integrated plans for scope, schedule, budget, resources, dependencies, quality, and acceptance.
• Monitor delivery against contractual commitments and business objectives across all project phases.
• Manage budgets, CPI cost controls, resource utilization, profitability, delivery investments, revenue milestones, customer acceptance, and contractual obligations.
• Identify commercial risks and contractual exposures.
• Govern change requests and scope modifications; assess, estimate, approve, and document changes, manage baselines, and prevent scope creep.

Resources, customers, and teams

• Plan and allocate resources with PMO, engineering, operations, and supporting teams; identify constraints and optimize utilization.
• Build customer relationships; lead governance meetings, steering committees, executive reviews, and status discussions.
• Manage customer expectations, decision-making, and approvals; act as the primary escalation point for project matters.
• Coordinate software engineering, QA, DevOps, architecture, infrastructure, security, business analysis, and external vendors.
• Foster collaboration and accountability and provide mentoring and guidance to project managers and delivery personnel.

Methods, vendors, and project recovery

• Apply Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, or hybrid delivery methods as appropriate and ensure adherence to SDLC processes.
• Oversee release planning, deployment coordination, testing, production readiness, continuous delivery, and operational excellence.
• Manage vendors, partners, and subcontractors and monitor their performance, contractual obligations, deliverables, quality, and timelines.
• Develop recovery plans for challenged projects and address schedule slippage, quality concerns, budget overruns, and resource issues.
• Complete project closure and operational handover, capture lessons learned, validate contractual completion and customer acceptance, and support business outcomes.
• Improve PMO frameworks, tools, templates, metrics, and governance; promote best practices and contribute to audits and process optimization.
• Support presales and transition planning with delivery estimates, assumptions, risks, resource plans, and implementation strategies.

Education and experience

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, information technology, engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• A master's degree in business, technology, or project management is an advantage.
• Minimum 10 years of experience in software, technology, digital transformation, or IT services, including at least 6 years of direct project management.
• Experience delivering complex software development or systems integration projects through initiation, planning, deployment, acceptance, and closure.
• Experience managing large enterprise or government accounts in Saudi Arabia and working in software development, IT consulting, systems integration, or managed services.
• Experience leading cross-functional, geographically distributed teams and managing project financials, contracts, changes, resources, commercial risks, multiple workstreams, vendors, dependencies, and senior stakeholders.
• Experience with STC, government entities, or other major KSA enterprise environments is highly desirable.

Technical and delivery knowledge

• Strong understanding of SDLC and practical knowledge of Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, and hybrid delivery methodologies.
• Knowledge of enterprise applications, digital platforms, APIs, integration architectures, cloud environments, and data migration.
• Familiarity with DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, release management, quality assurance, and production deployment.
• Competence in project planning, estimation, resource forecasting, financial tracking, RAID management, change control, and executive reporting.
• Proficiency with tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft 365.

Certifications

• PMP certification is required.
• PMI-ACP, PRINCE2, SAFe, CSM, PSM, or another recognized Agile certification is an advantage.
• ITIL or a relevant service management certification is an advantage for candidates with managed services experience.

Leadership and communication

• Strong leadership, delivery ownership, stakeholder management, customer relationship, executive communication, and presentation capabilities.
• Professional fluency in English is required; Arabic communication capability is strongly preferred.
• Commercial awareness, structured problem-solving, negotiation, decision-making, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Ability to challenge unrealistic expectations, protect approved scope, work under pressure, and recover complex projects.
• Strong attention to delivery evidence and governance discipline, with the ability to influence technical teams, business stakeholders, customers, and senior management.