Contractor, Technology Project Planner

About Cls:

CLS is the trusted party at the centre of the global FX ecosystem.  Utilized by thousands of counterparties, CLS makes FX safer, smoother and more cost effective.  Trillions of dollars’ worth of currency flows through our systems each day. 

Created by the market for the market, our unrivalled global settlement infrastructure reduces systemic risk and provides standardization for participants in many of the world’s most actively traded currencies.  We deliver huge efficiencies and savings for our clients: in fact, our approach to multilateral netting shrinks funding requirements by over 96% on average, so clients can put their capital and resources to better use.

CLS products are designed to enable clients to manage risk most effectively across the full FX lifecycle – whether through more efficient processing tools or market intelligence derived from the largest single source of FX executed data available to the market.

Our ambition to make a positive difference starts with our people.  Our values underpin everything that we do at CLS and define our working environment:

• Pivotal purpose
• Trusted guardian
• Targeted innovation
• Facilitate connections
• Delivering excellence
• Inclusive culture

Job Information:

• Functional title – Technology Project Planner
• Department – Technology Project Management
• Corporate level – Contractor
• Report to – Vice President, Technology Project Management
• Location - London, onsite 2 days per week

What You Will Be Doing:

The Project Planner will be a key role in supporting projects and improving the quality of plans within the Technology Project Management area. This role will report to the Senior Planner. Key responsibilities include: 

• Creates and embeds plan governance in-line with program / project governance and reporting.
• Follows due processes and procedures to support the plan management and governance including change management and status reporting.
• Assures the quality and technical robustness of plans in line with the standard.
• Develop a set of plan reporting metrics to drive escalations and determine if go-live at risk.
• Leverages planning guidance from ePMO to support the definition of project plans and reporting.
• Contribute and own wider planning improvement initiatives.

What We’Re Looking For:

• 5+ years of project management/project planner experience.
• Significant experience as a planner for large change programs and/or complex projects across an end-to-end project lifecycle gained within a large organization.
• Extensive hands-on experience of maintaining and managing plans in a fast-moving organization (waterfall, iterative and agile).
• Experience of working in a PMO with a solid understanding of project management best practice and methodology.
• Experienced in creating well-structured and good quality project documentation with excellent skills in the use of the MS Office suite of tools, Microsoft SharePoint and MS Project.
• Experience of using Microsoft Project. PPM Pro or similar tools to produce and maintain high quality project plans.
• Strong personal work ethic.
• Motivated delivery focused individual.
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Proven ability supporting the delivery of projects in a fast paced, complex, demanding environment.
• Owns and maintains the project plan for the project/program.
• Provides planning support to PM community including Planning tools (MSP and PPM Pro) skills development as required.
• Ensures plans are set up with appropriate logic to identify a clear Critical Path.
• Drives plan reporting including variance analysis; overdue and at-risk reporting; contingency management; critical path escalations; and plan metrics to support key stakeholders, look ahead dashboards.
• Facilitates the management of internal/external plan dependencies.
• Ensures the ‘high level delivery plan’ is maintained and reflects the plan status.
• Ensures risks / issues associated with overdue/at risk reporting milestones are defined and managed.
• Displays ownership of activities assigned to them and can drive ownership of plans and required improvements from key stakeholders.
• Capable of influencing project resources effectively through matrix management.
• Experienced at managing stakeholders ensuring strong communication and governance is in place.

Professional qualifications / certifications

• Educated to Graduate level.
• Desirable - Professional PM Accreditation (Prince 2, PMI, APM etc.).

Our Commitment To Employees:

At CLS, we celebrate inclusion and consider this to be one of our strongest assets. We are committed to fostering an environment in which everyone feels comfortable to be who they are, and inclusion is valued. All employees have access to our inclusive benefits, including:

• Holiday - UK/Asia: 25 holiday days and 3 ‘life days’ (in addition to bank holidays). US: 23 holiday days.
• 2 paid volunteer days so that you can actively support causes within your community that are important to you.
• Generous parental leave policies to ensure you can enjoy valuable time with your family.
• Parental transition coaching programmes and support services.
• Wellbeing and mental health support resources to ensure you are looking after yourself, and able to support others.
• Employee Networks (including our Women’s Forum, Black Employee Network and Pride Network) in support of our organisational commitment to embrace and always be learning more about inclusivity.
• Hybrid working to promote a healthy work/life balance, enabling employees to work collaboratively in the office when needed and work from home when they don’t.
• Active support of flexible working for all employees where possible.
• Monthly ‘Heads Down Days’ with no meetings across the whole company.
• Generous non-contributory pension provision for UK/Asia employees, and 401K match from CLS for US employees.
• Private medical insurance and dental coverage.
• Social events that give you opportunities to meet new people and broaden your network across the organisation.
• Annual flu vaccinations.
• Discounts and savings and cashback across a wide range of categories including health and retail for UK employees.
• Discounted Gym membership – Complete Body Gym Discount/Sweat equity program for US employees.
• All employees have access to Discover – our comprehensive learning platform with 1000+ courses from LinkedIn Learning.
• Access to frequent development sessions on a number of topics to help you be successful and develop your career at CLS.