Programme Manager

Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.

Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 700 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland and beyond. 

As a Programme Manager, you will play a key role in steering and implementing technology projects that support our business transformation objectives. The candidate will have a good background in

the PRA, Finance or Information Services sector and ideally within a mid-market private equity-backed business. This role demands a unique combination of strong technical skills, effective communication, and the ability to navigate the complexities of a dynamic environment.

Principal Accountabilities

Programme Delivery and Governance

• Manage end-to-end programme delivery across technology, editorial, products, sales, marketing, events and operations, ensuring strategic alignment with organisational goals.
• Establish clear scope, acceptance criteria and success metrics, define tolerances for schedule, cost and benefits, and maintain robust change control throughout the programme lifecycle.
• Lead programme governance meetings, present to steering committees and programme boards, and drive adoption of consistent standards, templates and tools across workstreams
• Enable timely decision-making by resolving issues, removing barriers and escalating exceptions within delegated authority to protect delivery outcomes.

Stakeholder Engagement and Reporting

• Engage and align across all functions through structured reporting, regular communications and effective governance.
• Operate a clear reporting cadence using standard RAG criteria and agreed KPIs, tracking performance across scope, schedule, costs, risks and dependencies

Financial Risk and Dependency Management

• Own programme budgets across CapEx and OpEx, maintain accurate forecasts-at-completion in alignment with finance, and surface variances early with options for decision.
• Maintain a rigorous RAID register with quantified risks assigned to named owners; actively manage cross-programme and third-party dependencies, escalating systemic risks with clear trade-offs.

Resource demand and capacity management

• Forecast demand and capacity across programme workstreams, match skills to demand and highlight bottlenecks with mitigation options.
• Secure resource commitments and adjust plans and sequencing to optimise utilisation and protect the critical path.

Benefits Realisation, Change Management and Adoption

• Develop and track the benefits realisation plan with the named benefits owner, initiating corrective actions where value realisation is at risk.
• Drive organisational change, business readiness, communication and training to achieve measurable adoption, transition services to BAU with agreed SLAs, run-books and knowledge transfer.

Line and Vendor Management

• Line-manage BAs and Project Managers including objective setting, performance reviews, recruitment and onboarding; forecast demand and capacity across programme workstreams.
• Manage third-party vendors end-to-end, including RFP processes, MSAs, SoWs, invoice tracking and issue resolution in liaison with procurement and legal teams.

AI-augmented delivery

• Use AI tools (e.g. Claude) to support programme planning, documentation, risk analysis and stakeholder communications while maintaining human-in-the-loop oversight; champion AI-augmented ways of working across the PMO and wider programme team.
• Champion AI-augmented ways of working across the portfolio management office and the wider programme team, identifying opportunities to increase efficiency and reduce manual effort.

Portfolio management office support

• Support the portfolio management team with strategic alignment, prioritisation, investment recommendations and continuous improvement of PMO practices and reporting of performance and delivery progress.

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world’s leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

Industry and Domain Knowledge

• Demonstrated success delivering complex, cross-functional programmes in information services, financial services, data and analytics or PRA environments, with understanding of PRA operating models including pricing methodology governance and editorial workflows.
• Significant experience leading multiple concurrent initiatives with clear value realisation, outcome-based planning and extensive commercial delivery of technology and business change.

Governance, Risk and Financial Acumen

• Strong knowledge of programme governance frameworks, RAID management, dependency registers, benefits tracking and structured decision-making within delegated tolerances.
• Proficiency in budget ownership, forecasting, accruals, purchase orders and invoice validation across CapEx and OpEx, with ability to apply variance analysis and earned-value techniques.

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication

• Ability to engage and influence senior stakeholders constructively across Technology, Editorial, Products, Sales, Marketing, Events and Operations, maintaining transparency through structured governance.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with a track record of clear executive updates, decision papers and transparent programme reporting.

Delivery Methodology and Technology

• Deep knowledge of Agile methods (Scrum, Kanban), scaled frameworks (e.g. SAFe), and hands-on proficiency with Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps, Microsoft 365, Power BI and standard PM planning tools (Monday.com, SmartSheet or MS-Project).
• Practical understanding of Microsoft Azure, .NET, React, Node.js, REST APIs, data pipelines and DevOps practices including CI/CD, automated testing and release engineering.

Leadership, Change Management and Vendors

• Leadership experience in matrixed, global organisations with the ability to coach cross-functional teams, drive organisational change, and manage business readiness, training and transition to BAU.
• Experience running RFPs, creating MSAs and SoWs, and managing multiple third-party vendors to deliver solutions to agreed quality while tracking invoices and payments.

AI-augmented delivery

• Practical experience using AI assistants such as Claude for programme planning, scheduling, risk analysis, reporting and stakeholder communications, with ability to craft effective prompts for high-quality programme artefacts.
• Understanding of responsible AI practices including human-in-the-loop oversight, output validation and data sensitivity, with willingness to champion AI-augmented ways of working and coach others in effective AI tool use.

Qualifications and certifications

• Degree or equivalent experience with relevant certifications such as MSP, PRINCE2, PMI, SAFe or Scrum preferred, and demonstrated proficiency in using AI tools to plan and manage programmes is beneficial.

Legal and ethical awareness

• Awareness of competition law, editorial independence and data ethics considerations relevant to analytics, AI use and cross-functional forums involving market-sensitive information.

If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It’s this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

• METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers’ experience and our business performance
• ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
• GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
• INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
• CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
• COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.

We are committed to ensuring all candidates feel welcomed and supported. Should your application advance and you require accommodations for the interview process, please inform us so we can make the necessary arrangements.

You’ve read a little about us – now it’s over to you!

If you like what you’ve read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it’s time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it’s used to determine whether or not you’ll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we’ll ask you on the day.

It’s vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you’re great.