Intrastructure Project Manager - Betfair

Betfair is one of the UK?s biggest internet success stories and has grown substantially in its eight years of trading; now processing over 5 million transactions a day and more than 300 bets a second - more than all the European stock exchanges combined - and settlement is immediate. 99.9 per cent of transactions are completed in less than one second. The Betfair interface can be seen as bearing a strong similarity to that of the Stock Exchange, with the 'bet' and 'lay' options comparing to the buying and selling of derivatives.

We have won two Queen?s awards for Enterprise; initially for Innovation and more recently in the International Trade category. Betfair is now the world leading legal e-Gaming company and largest betting exchange in the world by a considerable distance.

Position Purpose:

The role of a IS Project Manager is to be responsible for the delivery of infrastructure based projects based on Betfair?s implementation of the PRINCE2 project management methodology. Assigned at the completion of the start-up stage, the project manager drives the project through the full project lifecycle

This individual fulfilling this role will have a track record of managing projects for fast paced organisations where time to market, quality and rapid change are critical to the company?s success. The position reports to the IS Projects team lead and the successful candidate will manage and co-ordinate project activities across functional teams to ensure that all teams are focused on project delivery.

The Project Manager will work with IS function heads and team leads to allocate and assign resources, solve scheduling and prioritisation conflicts, and to motivate the team. The position is targeted to an individual who can provide leadership with energy who is able to help Betfair take this function to a new level as the company continues its rapid growth. 

Key Responsibilities / Duties:

·     Responsible for the validation of the project effort and timescale estimates used in any business cases submissions

• Evaluate business cases and validate their fitness for purpose for initiating projects.
• Deliver successful projects to agreed acceptance criteria, on time and within budget.
• Create detailed schedules and drive IS  projects forward through and around roadblocks, including reporting progress, issues and risks
• Work with other managers across functional areas such as marketing, product management, quality assurance, IS and operations to on time and high quality project completion
• Track third party deliverables and ensure that external dependencies are factored into project plans.
• Effectively communicate across functional areas and to executive management on project progress, issues and risks
• Identify key issues/roadblocks for project and aggressively find solutions that allow the team to stay on track
• Build cross-functional projects plans and ensure timely and effective communication across functional area
• Pragmatically apply formal project management techniques, skills and methodologies
• Maintain project issues and risk logs and facilitate the resolution of issues and the mitigation of project risks

·      Update and monitor a programme wide risk, issues and log any recurring process or resource bottle necks to allow programme wide blockers to be removed

• Build strong working relationships with business sponsors, stakeholders, product managers, engineering managers, developers and test engineers
• Apply and promote Betfair Project Management processes, controls and techniques in a pragmatic manner
• Troubleshoot, problem-solve, and negotiate compromises to make sure that roadblocks are  anticipated and tackled to minimise impact to schedule, quality and functionality
• Track, report and communicate action items and key project milestones
• Assist with the production of business cases and support the definition of the product deliverables
• Develop and maintain a strong in-depth knowledge of Betfair products and use this knowledge to refine focus and influence product directions
• Contribute to weekly programme status reports
• Develop and maintain an awareness of stakeholder requirements
• Develop and maintain an awareness of programme status and key issues and risks
• Drive continual improvement of Betfair project management processes

 Experience & Qualifications Required

• Extensive experience in project management in a similar environment
• Certification or proven extensive experience of formal project management methodologies preferably Prince2 or alternatively the ability to use another formal methodology, such as PMBok, within a Prince2 environment
• Proven experience successfully managing complex projects from inception to delivery
• Experience writing or making sure that high quality specifications are delivered and executing project plans from these documents.
• Full project life cycle projects surrounding technologies including Windows, Linux, UNIX, SQL Server, Oracle, LAN/WAN and data centers is fully required

 Key Skills & Attributes:

• Demonstrable ability to pragmatically apply project management methods
• The ability to effectively manage more than one project in parallel
• Negotiation and consensus building skills ? with developers, customers and senior board level stakeholders etc
• Outstanding management and team building skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills