Sr. Director, PDLC Governance

About this role

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose Enable strategic direction by serving as the enterprise product owner for the Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) framework. The role is responsible PDLC strategy, governance, standards, adoption, and ongoing maturity to enable consistent, disciplined execution of company initiatives across product, technology, and business teams. This role oversees prioritized programs and governance activities, embeds risk and control requirements into lifecycle execution, and partners with Product, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit, and executive stakeholders to ensure delivery capabilities are scalable, effective, audit-ready, and aligned with business and regulatory expectations.

Essential Functions

• Service Excellence and governance: Provides executive governance and communications to ensure effective resource utilization, prioritization, and lifecycle decision-making. Owns and maintains PDLC standards, procedures, controls, operating models, governance forums, and operational rhythms; continuously evaluates processes and methodologies to improve consistent execution.

• Operational Effectiveness: Establishes and monitors OKRs, KPIs, lifecycle health measures, control effectiveness, risks, issues, and remediation activity. Uses insights to prioritize corrective actions, roadmap improvements, and sustainable resolution of execution or control gaps.

• Strategic Partner: Manages executive communication and escalations across the organization related to PDLC execution and governance. Serves as a senior escalation point for lifecycle interpretation, stage-gate decisions, exceptions, and deviations within delegated authority, and aligns stakeholders across first-, second-, and third-line functions.

• Change management champion: Leads cross-functional change, challenges current ways of working when they limit impact, and builds scalable systems and implementation approaches that improve execution across teams and drive enterprise-wide adoption and maturity of PDLC requirements.

• Enterprise PDLC ownership: Defines the PDLC product vision, strategy, roadmap, requirements, and prioritized backlog; ensures lifecycle capabilities evolve based on business, risk, regulatory, technology, and user needs.

• Lifecycle controls and stage gates: Defines and governs stage gates, evidence requirements, stage-exit criteria, and lifecycle controls. Maintains clear accountability for lifecycle execution and drives consistent use of requirements across multiple lines of business.

• Cross-functional execution: Partners with Product, Program, Engineering, Tooling, and Build Leads to translate business requirements into PDLC capabilities, backlog priorities, process improvements, workflow, and automation while balancing control rigor and product agility.

• Risk, audit, and regulatory readiness: Partners with Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit, and other oversight functions to align risk and control activities and evidence expectations while maintaining clear first-line accountability. Represents PDLC governance with executive leadership, auditors, regulators, and internal oversight functions as appropriate. 

• Support the company's commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data.

Minimum Qualifications • Education and experience typically obtained through completion of a Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Project Management and/or Computer Science or related field.

• Typically has 15 years of experience in project/program management, product governance, enterprise transformation, or related leadership, or demonstrated portfolio consistent with experience required of the role.

• Proven leadership experience managing teams and leading complex, enterprise-wide or cross-functional initiatives through scalable operating practices.

• Demonstrated P&L experience from both a department and project level.

• Excellent oral, written, interpersonal, presentation, and analytical skills, with the ability to communicate complex governance, risk, control, and remediation outcomes clearly.

• Proven experience presenting to and influencing senior and executive stakeholders, including aligning perspectives across Product, Technology, Risk, Compliance, and audit functions.

• MS 365 (PPT, Word, Excel, Project, etc.) 

• Comprehensive knowledge of Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) frameworks, lifecycle governance, and enterprise operating models.

• Ability to translate business, risk, regulatory, and technology requirements into governance standards, roadmap priorities, capabilities, and process decisions.

• Strong knowledge of risk and control practices, including governance, control effectiveness, evidence requirements, issue remediation, and audit readiness.

• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional change and drive adoption across multiple lines of business through influence, sound judgment, and scalable operating practices.

• Background and drug screen.

Preferred Qualifications • Experience with enterprise workflow, project management, and collaboration platforms, including Jira and Confluence, and automation supporting lifecycle governance.

• Financial services or financial technology

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