Executive Program Director

Executive Program Director - Retail

Overview

Join Cognizant as an inspiring leader within the Digital Program Management Community. This key role is accountable for delivering digital solutions and business benefits throughout our clients’ digital transformation journey. We are looking for candidates who have strong experience engaging in the sales process and subsequently leading and running digital - strategy and delivery programs. Successful candidates can simultaneously take responsibility for program timelines, scope, margin, and stakeholder management. We would love to talk with you about leading strategic programs with multiple digital service line projects across Cognizant!

Role

• Drive consensus between various client and Cognizant leaders to facilitate the conversion of program's Vision and Goals into a Program Charter
• Identify partners and establish effective governance with the CXO(s) and senior program leadership. Act as the single point of contact for the program's client CXO suite to keep positive relationships
• Facilitate cross-project collaboration. Drive program level planning efforts, identifying, and leading critical program level dependencies
• Validate lifecycle methodology of various projects and ensure alignment and aggregation of key data will be possible to enable tracking and reporting
• Provide thought leadership within the Digital Program Management Guild
• Analyze and relentlessly focus on value delivery and encourage improved business outcomes to achieve program goals and metrics
• Bring together multiple solution components across our internal practices and service lines, including experience strategy, design, and technology architecture, etc. and be the single source of ownership for the plan.
• Understand, initiate and or facilitate scope / changes to SOW, supporting the individual Project/Program Manager(s)/ Scrum Masters as required
• Interact with Client and internal Cognizant partners to resolve critical issues and communicate potential 'significant change', as identified
• Ensure a strong understanding of the Client’s needs; use opportunities to understand and provide inputs / direction on their IT / Business roadmap to provide focus and visibility in to the CXO charters
• Share consultative feedback with the broader account team, governance bodies, and stakeholders in terms of client's focus areas
• Proactively engage to build an eco-system of partners and generate awareness about shared risks, accountability, and rewards
  
  

Professional Qualifications And Skills

• Digital services consulting firm or digital agency experience
• 20 plus years in strategy, operations, process consulting, stakeholder management, project / program delivery within digital transformations
• MBA or Master’s degree strongly preferred; Bachelor degree required
• Project / Program training and certifications (PMI / SAFe 5.0 / Prince II)
• Broad program management experience – ability to navigate Heritage, Hybrid and Agile methodologies
• Experience leading and running complex delivery programs (i.e. across geographies, teams, silos, etc.)
• Knowledge of digital ecosystem and digital skills for one or more industries. Digital skills include Experience Strategy, Experience Design, Digital Experience Platforms, Technical Architecture, and Analytics
• Significant experience leading sophisticated transformations or programs that span functions, departments, and enterprise
• Trusted team leader who delivers results – delivering defined business value to our Client
  
  

Professional Attributes of the Executive Program Director

• Effective Communication and Partner Management – emotional intelligence, empathy and strong social, communications, and engaging presentation skills
• Structured Thinking and Presentation – comfort dealing with ambiguity and ability to provide structure and frame thinking logically and effectively.
• Proven leadership of teams and business priorities through building relationships, listening, consulting and influencing outcomes in both client delivery and in sales
• Articulate sophisticated information and business insights into meaningful action items and problem-solving decisions for senior leaders
• Consultative, entrepreneurial, proactive, and productive; someone who instinctively knows what needs to be done and motivates colleagues towards accomplishments.