The Life Information Systems division builds and maintains underwriting and claims management applications for life insurance products. This Project Leader IS Life role exists to strengthen project management on a portfolio of application projects that use a Microfocus mainframe emulator on Windows, Cobol/Mix Cobol + .NET components and frontends in .NET and CRM, and requires strong experience with Prince-2 and Cobol-aware delivery environments.
The mission
The division runs multiple concurrent projects, several historically exceeding 1,000 mandays, that deliver new underwriting flows, policy servicing and claims automation. The technical landscape mixes a mainframe emulator (Microfocus) running Cobol and hybrid Cobol+.NET programs, .NET frontends and CRM integrations, plus printing and middleware components. Delivery follows Prince-2 and waterfall governance with formal steering committees and structured test phases.
Day to day you will lead project governance and planning, translate business requirements into a scoping and delivery plan, and coordinate architects, developers and testing teams across these heterogeneous technologies. You will set the project roadmap and budget estimates, chair the steering committee, produce the required project reporting, and drive risk and issue mitigation so releases meet agreed quality and timing targets.
Your responsibilities
- Lead project governance and stakeholder alignment, delivering a stakeholder matrix, communication plan and steering committee outputs.
- Define and own project scope, business case and high-level solution tradeoffs, preventing over-engineering and keeping value/cost/timing balanced.
- Produce the project roadmap, product breakdown structure and detailed work-package estimates to populate the project budget forecast.
- Coordinate architecture and integration activities with architects to produce architecture deliverables and milestone plans.
- Track delivery progress and quality, report highlights to senior management, and maintain risk/issue/action logs with clear remediation plans.
- Motivate and coordinate cross-functional teams, encourage knowledge transfer and ensure operational readiness for handover.
Your profile
Essential skills
- At least 10 years’ experience managing IT projects on the application side, with evidence of leading projects >1,000 mandays.
- Demonstrable Prince-2 project management experience and working knowledge of waterfall delivery.
- Strong command of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for planning, reporting and budget consolidation.
- Ability to work with Cobol-based stacks, and to coordinate hybrid Cobol + .NET teams even if not coding daily.
- Clear communicator, structured and result oriented, able to negotiate scope with business stakeholders.
Preferred skills
- Experience with DWH projects, .NET frontends, CRM integrations, or test management principles.
- Familiarity with Mix Cobol + .NET landscapes and mainframe emulation (Microfocus) is a plus.
Languages
- English, B2 (required)
- Dutch, C1 preferred (A2 acceptable as minimum)
- French, C1 preferred (A2 acceptable as minimum)
Education
- Master in Engineering, Computer Sciences or equivalent professional experience
Notes: this role emphasises disciplined Prince-2 delivery, stakeholder governance and experience running application projects on Cobol/.NET hybrid landscapes. Keywords in this description include senior it project manager prince-2, project leader life information systems and cobol .net migration projects.