Program Manager - Education

The Program Manager will lead the strategic planning, execution, and successful delivery of multiple concurrent projects for a major institutional client. This is a highly delivery-focused role requiring a professional who can ensure clear project scope, realistic planning aligned with business objectives, and the achievement of on-time milestones. The successful candidate will bring deep expertise in program governance, stakeholder communication, and risk management within a technical environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Program & Project Delivery: Own end-to-end delivery for a large-scale account, defining project scope, business requirements, UAT readiness, and success criteria.
  


• Governance & Compliance: Establish and enforce program governance frameworks, utilizing reporting dashboards and metrics to track progress against schedule, budget, and quality objectives.
  


• Stakeholder Management: Act as the primary delivery contact for client stakeholders, providing transparent updates on project status, risks, and dependencies to ensure expectations remain aligned.
  


• Technical Leadership: Implement Agile processes (sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retrospectives) and align delivery with solution designs for process automation, API integrations, and AI/ML use cases.
  


• Commercial & Resource Optimization: Calculate and optimize man-hours across project phases, monitor team workloads to prevent bottlenecks, and prepare reports on actual versus planned effort for client audit and acceptance.
  


• Risk Mitigation: Proactively identify program-level risks and maintain robust contingency and escalation plans to safeguard delivery outcomes.
  

Requirements

·       Bachelor’s degree in one of:(computer science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Information System), or a related field (Master’s preferred).

·       Professional certifications: PMP or PgMP (required), Agile/Scrum Master (preferred), SAFe Agile or equivalent. Familiarity with ITIL v4/ISO 20000 certification.

·       10+ years of progressive project/program management experience with at least 5 years in program leadership focused on application development and agile methodology.

·       Proven track record delivering large-scale, multi-project programs for enterprise or higher-education clients. Familiarity with Higher Education systems and applications is strongly preferred.

Work Location:

Abu Dhabi

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