About this role
Role: Program Director (Data and Analytics) / French
Work location: Montreal or Quebec City (Levis) region
Contract
Job name – Program Director (Data and Analytics)
Profile:
• 15+ years of experience in project/program management, including significant experience at a program or portfolio director level.
• Comfortable in highly regulated, matrixed environments, ideally in financial services or a comparable public/para-public context.
• Experience with, or a strong understanding of, organizational transformation focused on maximizing the value of information assets — a key asset for this program.
• Proven executive leadership: senior-level communication, steering committee management, strategic priority arbitration.
• Fluent business French, essential for this mandate.
• Recognized professional certification in project or program management (PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP, SAFe, or equivalent) strongly preferred.
• Undergraduate degree in business administration, information technology, project management, or a related field; a Master's degree (MBA or equivalent) is an asset.
• Knowledge of the cooperative financial sector or the Desjardins ecosystem — an asset.
• Location: Greater Montreal or Quebec City region.
Skillset required:
• French required
Technical skills
• Portfolio and program management (integrated planning, multi-project governance, benefits management).
• Data governance, MDM concepts, and unified customer view architecture.
• Agile, hybrid, and Waterfall project management methodologies, and PMO practices.
• Program-level budget management (consolidated budgets, forecasting, financial tracking).
• Governance and tracking tools: Microsoft Project, JIRA, Confluence, Power BI, or equivalent.
• Familiarity with enterprise risk management frameworks and regulatory compliance (data governance, privacy protection, information security).
Behavioural skills and leadership
• Mobilizing leadership and the ability to coach and develop project management teams.
• Excellent executive communication and presentation skills for senior leadership and governance committees.
• Strong political acumen and the ability to navigate complex, high-stakes organizational environments.
• Ability to arbitrate competing priorities across multiple project workstreams.
• Rigour, autonomy, and a strong sense of accountability for delivery and compliance commitments.
• Excellent negotiation skills and ability to manage relationships with internal stakeholders and external vendors
Roles and Responsibilities:
• Define and maintain the program's strategic roadmap, including alignment across the various Data & Analytics projects and workstreams.
• Oversee and mentor a team of project managers and workstream leads, ensuring consistency in methodologies, deliverables, and governance standards.
• Ensure overall program governance: consolidated budget management, program-level risks, cross-project dependencies, and expected business benefits.
• Act as the primary point of contact with steering committees, senior leadership, and executive stakeholders, including producing progress reports and strategic presentations.
• Lead large-scale organizational change management and foster buy-in from Business, IT, Data, Risk, Compliance, Security, and Operations stakeholders.
• Anticipate and arbitrate strategic issues and competing priorities across the program's projects.
• Ensure accountability to the client and guarantee the program meets its data governance, regulatory compliance, and business value objectives.