The organisation operates a large life insurance applications portfolio, responsible for underwriting and claims systems built on a Microfocus mainframe emulator and a mix of Cobol/Mix Cobol+ and .NET frontends. This Senior Project Leader role exists to strengthen project governance and delivery across multiple large projects, bringing Prince-2 and strong application-side project management experience to coordinate architecture, business stakeholders and technical teams.
The mission
The role sits inside the life insurance applications area, where upcoming years’ work is largely project-driven. The technical landscape includes a Microfocus mainframe emulator on Windows, Cobol/Mix Cobol+ back-end code, .NET and CRM frontends, printing and integration components. Typical projects exceed 1,000 mandays and require cross-team planning, quality controls and budget consolidation.
Day to day you will set up and run project governance, define roadmaps and budgets, and act as the point of coordination between architects, business owners and development teams. You will be expected to produce stakeholder matrices, communication plans, project roadmaps and risk logs, and to report progress on scope, timing, quality and budget to senior management and clients.
Your responsibilities
- Lead project governance and steering: establish stakeholder matrix, steering committee cadence and communication plan to ensure timely decisions and visibility.
- Drive scope and requirements decisions: challenge business requirements, define high-level scope/value trade-offs and maintain an open point log with actions and decisions.
- Plan and control delivery: deliver project roadmaps, work-package estimations and budget forecasts, and track progress against milestones for projects of 1,000+ mandays.
- Coordinate architecture and technical outputs: align architects and teams on expected deliverables and milestones, and ensure architecture planning is integrated into the project timeline.
- Manage risks, issues and quality: proactively identify risks, propose mitigation actions, maintain risk/issue/action logs and report highlight reports to stakeholders.
- Motivate and align teams: stimulate cross-team collaboration, encourage initiative and support skills development within project teams.
Your profile
Essential skills
- 10+ years delivering IT projects on the application side, including multiple projects >1,000 mandays.
- Solid experience with Prince-2 and proven use of waterfall delivery in large programmes.
- Hands-on familiarity with life or insurance services and their operational constraints.
- Strong communication, stakeholder management and structured planning skills; ability to adapt messaging to technical and business audiences.
- Proficient with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for planning, reporting and budgeting.
Preferred skills
- Practical exposure to Agile/Scrum, data warehouse (DWH) initiatives, or test management principles.
- Experience as or close collaboration with business analysts.
- Technical awareness of Cobol / Mix Cobol+, .NET, CRM frontends and Microfocus mainframe emulator environments.
Languages
- English: B2 (required)
- Dutch: C1 preferred (one of Dutch or French should be fluent)
- French: C1 preferred (one of Dutch or French should be fluent; the other may be A1)
Education
- Master in Engineering, Computer Sciences or equivalent professional experience.