Senior Project Manager, Financial Services

Overview:

Our Project Manager position will work out of our Hartford, Connecticut office on a hybrid schedule to support the Talcott Enterprise Portfolio Management Office.  The selected candidate will handle the successful planning and execution of assigned projects. This Project Manager will be accountable for designing, adoption, and roll-out of process improvements. Detailed responsibilities include:

Project Management:

• Lead and manage full-cycle projects across multiple functional areas.
• Plan, organize, and control activities across projects of varying complexity, ensuring delivery within defined scope, timeline, and budget.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive project plans, tracking key milestones, dependencies and phase reviews across the lifecycle.
• Collaborate with project sponsors and senior stakeholders to align goals with strategic objectives and define success metrics and business cases.
• Serve as a liaison between functions to gather requirements, prioritize initiatives, and implement high-impact solutions.
• Apply best-practice methodologies to plan, execute, and monitor projects efficiently.
• Oversee project budgets, resource allocation, stakeholder communication, and executive reporting.
• Manage the change management, user adoption, and operational readiness to ensure successful transition of project deliverables.
• Proactively manage risks, issues, assumptions, dependencies, and financials, identifying systemic trends and driving timely resolution and alignment at the appropriate leadership level.

Leadership:

• Aid in building an operating structure and improving project management discipline.
• Create materials for portfolio health reviews, metrics/scorecards, steering committee, and roadmap planning.
• Facilitate meetings to remove blockers and advance project work and portfolio management discipline.
• Analyze data and develop recommendations.
• Partner to develop continuous feedback mechanisms and improvements to operating structure, tools, and processes.
• Highly collaborative and effective partner; ability to effect change in a matrix managed geographically dispersed environment.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Critical Thinking: Thoughtful process of analyzing data and problem-solving data to reach a well-reasoned solution.
• Work as a team to effectively drive our culture and execute our common goals. 
• Continuously build knowledge of the financial services industry and apply new ways of thinking and skills to make sound business decisions.

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 7 years of progressive project, program, or portfolio management experience
• Experience in financial services, reinsurance, or life and annuity industries is preferred
• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in business, technology, finance, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Demonstrated success delivering increasingly complex projects, programs, or transformation initiatives from planning through execution and adoption.
• Proven experience partnering with executives, senior leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders to align priorities, manage expectations, and drive outcomes.
• Strong facilitation skills, including leading workshops, decision forums, planning sessions, and executive-level meetings.
• Demonstrated ability to implement portfolio governance, planning cadences, investment prioritization frameworks, enterprise governance models, and executive reporting disciplines.
• Expertise with hybrid delivery models, including Agile, Scaled Agile, and Waterfall approaches, with experience in release planning, dependency management, integrated roadmaps, and operational readiness.
• Working knowledge of AI-enabled productivity, analytics, and project management tools, including the ability to use AI responsibly to improve planning, risk identification, reporting, decision support, and process efficiency.
• Strategic thinker with strong analytical, problem-solving, and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to navigate ambiguity and translate complex information into actionable recommendations.
• Highly collaborative and adaptable partner who can influence change in a matrixed, geographically dispersed environment while managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced setting.
• Professional certifications such as PMP, PgMP, PfMP, PMI-ACP, SAFe, ITIL, or equivalent credentials preferred.