Senior Project Manager - Enterprise & Cyber Risk Programs

Senior Project Manager - Enterprise & Cyber Risk ProgramsHeredia, Costa Rica - Hybrid (2 days a week at the office, 3 days remote)4 to 5 MonthsSchedule - Day shift, with reasonable flexibility for global stakeholder forums.Project scope - Own one or more priority projects and coordinate dependencies across related workstreams.Location: Costa Rica | Hybrid (2 days a week at the office, 3 days remote), full-timeProfile: Senior PM with experience managing complex cross-functional initiatives; risk, cybersecurity, or technology experience preferred.
THE MISSION:Be the Program Director's delivery force multiplier: take end-to-end ownership of priority projects, create decision velocity, reduce coordination overhead, and protect momentum across the risk portfolio. This is a hands-on senior project management role.
THE IDEAL CANDIDATE:An experienced Senior Project Manager who can move from an executive decision to an integrated plan to action-level closure - creating leverage for the Program Director without creating dependency or bureaucracy.
Candidate Profile:The strongest candidate combines disciplined project management, facilitation, executive communication, risk fluency and operational judgment. They can assume ownership quickly, tailor controls to the work and operate independently from the first weeks of the assignment.
Assignment Context:The Senior Project Manager will manage one or more complex projects that may span enterprise and cyber risk reduction, controls and regulatory remediation, technology and process change, operating-model improvement, and AI-enabled risk transformation. The role coordinates related workstreams and stakeholders under the Program Director; accountable risk owners and technical SMEs retain subject-matter and risk decisions.Delivery responsibilities are aligned to established PMI project management disciplines and tailored to the appropriate predictive, adaptive or hybrid approach.
How this role creates leverage:FACILITATE: Turn forums into clear decisions, accountable owners and dated actions - not more meetings.OPTIMIZE: Right-size governance, improve the source of truth and automate repeatable administration.ACCELERATE: Protect the critical path, remove blockers early and move priority deliverables to closure.
Core Responsibilities:Establish governance and integrate the project• Charter and outcomes. Confirm objectives, intended risk reduction, success measures, sponsorship, roles, decision rights and the delivery approach.• Integrated management plan. Establish the project plan, governance cadence, RACI, communications, controls and authoritative source of truth.• Tailoring. Apply proportionate project management practices and select a predictive, adaptive or hybrid approach suited to the work.
Manage scope, requirements and change• Scope baseline. Translate objectives into clear deliverables, requirements, acceptance criteria, work packages and accountable owners.• Change control. Assess proposed changes for value, risk, schedule, resource and cost impact; maintain traceability and secure approvals.• Priority discipline. Protect the agreed outcomes and prevent unplanned work from displacing the critical path without an explicit decision.
Plan and control schedule, resources and financials• Schedule. Build and maintain an integrated milestone plan with sequencing, critical path, dependencies, assumptions and forecast dates.• Resources and suppliers. Confirm capacity, skills, commitments and third-party dependencies; surface gaps and conflicts early.• Financial control. Track budget, forecast, procurement dependencies and material variance where these are within project scope.
Manage risk, issues, dependencies and quality• RAID control. Maintain active risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies with owners, responses, dates and escalation thresholds.• Quality and assurance. Define review and acceptance criteria, plan assurance, track evidence and coordinate practical remediation.• Recovery. Diagnose variance, develop recovery options and drive approved corrective actions to restore credible delivery.
Lead stakeholders, the team and decision forums• Stakeholder engagement. Map influence and impact; build alignment across risk owners, technology, security, compliance, legal, audit and regional teams.• Facilitation. Design agendas, pre-reads and workshops that produce decisions, accountable owners and dated actions.• Team leadership. Clarify roles, resolve conflict, support accountable execution and influence effectively without formal authority.
Measure performance and communicate with precision• Performance measurement. Maintain reliable actuals, forecasts, milestone confidence and agreed indicators; identify adverse trends early.• Executive reporting. Produce concise status and decision papers centered on outcomes, exposure, trade-offs, asks and recovery.• Escalation. Raise material matters early with evidence, options, a recommendation, an accountable decision-maker and a due date.
Optimize delivery and complete a clean transition• Operating improvement. Remove duplicate trackers and low-value meetings; simplify or automate approved reporting and administration.• Outcomes and closure. Confirm acceptance, evidence, intended risk reduction, lessons learned and ownership of any remaining benefits or actions.• Handover. Maintain decision history and provide a current plan, RAID, outstanding actions, project records and return briefing.
Key deliverables:Project charter and success measuresScope, requirements and change logRAID, dependency and decision logsExecutive status and decision packsOptimized project workspace and templatesIntegrated project management plan and roadmapSchedule, critical path and resource viewStakeholder, RACI and communication planQuality, assurance and evidence trackingClosure and end-of-assignment handover pack
Experience Required:5+ years managing complex, cross-functional projects end-to-end, including meaningful delivery in enterprise, technology, cyber or operational risk, controls, regulatory change or audit remediation.Rapid onboarding. Evidence of entering ambiguous environments, stabilizing delivery quickly and producing results with limited supervision.Project lifecycle. Strong command of chartering, scope, schedule, critical path, resources, financials, quality, RAID, dependencies, change control, recovery and closure using predictive, agile or hybrid methods.Facilitation and influence. Able to lead difficult conversations, create alignment and hold senior owners accountable without relying on formal authority.Executive communication. Excellent written and spoken English; able to turn complexity into concise status, options, recommendations and decisions.Risk fluency. Practical understanding of first-, second- and third-line roles, controls, policy and regulatory obligations, audit evidence and risk acceptance/escalation.Digital fluency. Strong Microsoft Office and Teams skills plus experience with Confluence or SharePoint and at least one delivery tool such as Jira, Smartsheet or Microsoft Project.Cyber and technology awareness. Working knowledge sufficient to coordinate topics such as vulnerability management, data protection and encryption, identity and access, third-party risk, controls and remediation; deep technical SME expertise is not required.Availability and discretion. Available full-time for the complete assignment, able to work in the agreed hybrid model in Heredia, and trusted with sensitive information.
Experience Preferred:Environment. Experience in a global, regulated, data, financial-services or technology organization.Risk model. Prior work with first-line operational risk and close partnership with second-line risk, security, compliance, legal or internal audit.Optimization. Track record simplifying or automating project and program operations with approved AI, no-code, workflow or knowledge-management tools.Credentials. PMP is strongly preferred; PRINCE2, APM, Agile or comparable project/change credentials are also valued.Commercial judgment. Financial literacy for resource, supplier or budget tracking where relevant.Languages. professional English is required. Portuguese is a nice to have
How the best candidate works:Low ego, high ownership - Takes accountability without creating dependency.Calm under pressure - Creates clarity when priorities or stakeholders conflict.Structured, not bureaucratic - Uses only the governance needed to improve outcomes.Constructive challenger - Raises issues early and pairs challenge with optionsExecutive-ready and hands-on - Moves from a one-page narrative to the action detail.Leaves systems better - Improves the operating model rather than merely maintaining it.
Selection evidence:Candidates should be prepared to discuss concrete examples of:End-to-end delivery. A complex project they initiated or took over, controlled and delivered through closure.Project recovery. A delayed or at-risk project they re-planned, recovered and returned to credible control.Decision acceleration. A stalled executive decision they reframed and moved to closure.Governance tailoring. A project control, reporting or coordination process they simplified without weakening oversight.Executive communication. How they structure a concise status or decision paper for senior leaders.