Project Manager, IT Project Manager

Project Manager – Payments / Card Issuing

Location: Northampton (Hybrid – 2–3 days onsite)

Seniority level: Mid-Senior level,
Employment type: Contract

We’re looking for an experienced Project Manager to lead complex change initiatives within the payments and card issuing space. This is a long‑term contract opportunity, ideal for someone with strong delivery, governance, and stakeholder management experience across regulated environments.

• Lead full project lifecycle delivery, from initiation to BAU handover
• Develop and manage detailed project plans, governance, and dependencies
• Engage and influence senior stakeholders, vendors, and delivery partners
• Coordinate cross‑functional teams and third‑party suppliers
• Manage budgets, forecasting, and financial reporting
• Own RAID management and escalation
• Produce clear and timely project reporting for governance forums
• Support change adoption through training, communications, and process updates

• 6–10+ years’ experience in Project Management, ideally within transformation programmes
• Strong knowledge of the card issuing lifecycle (e.g. BINs, tokenisation VTS/MDES, EMV, 3DS/SCA, fraud & disputes, fulfilment)
• Experience managing vendors and ensuring Visa/Mastercard scheme compliance
• Understanding of regulatory frameworks such as PCI DSS, PSD2, FCA
• Proven delivery experience using hybrid methodologies (Agile & stage‑gate)
• Confident communicator with strong analytical and problem‑solving skills

• Project governance and delivery
• Payments technology & integrations (APIs, microservices)
• Risk and control frameworks
• Stakeholder and vendor management
• JIRA, MS Project, Power BI, Confluence
• Certifications:
  
  PMP, PRINCE2, SAFe, ITIL
• Experience with processors such as TSYS, Fiserv, Marqeta

Notwithstanding any guidelines given to level of experience sought, we will consider candidates from outside this range if they can demonstrate the necessary competencies.

Square One is acting as both an employment agency and an employment business, and is an equal opportunities recruitment business. Square One embraces diversity and will treat everyone equally. Please see our website for our full diversity statement.