Program Planner

Job Title: Program Planner
Location: Manchester
Salary/Rate:£380
Start Date:18/03/2026
Job Type: contract - 6 months

Company Introduction
We have an exciting opportunity with one of our Tier 1 banking clients! They are currently seeking a skilled program planner to join their team on a six-month contract.

Job Responsibilities/Objectives

Develop, maintain, and optimise end‑to‑end programme plans using Microsoft Project (MSP), ensuring accurate dependencies, critical paths, milestones, and resource allocations.

• Validate and challenge workstream plans to ensure feasibility, logical sequencing, and alignment to programme timelines.
• Produce integrated master schedules that consolidate multiple concurrent projects and provide a clear view of overall progress, risks, and timeline pressures.
• Support programme forecasting activities, including effort estimation, resource planning, and capacity modelling.
• Governance, Reporting & Analysis
• Prepare high‑quality reports, dashboards, and presentations using Excel and PowerPoint, enabling senior stakeholders to track progress, risks, and issues.
• Maintain planning artefacts in Confluence, ensuring version control and clear documentation of changes, assumptions, and decisions.
• Support governance forums by providing planning intelligence, impact assessments, scenario modelling, and schedule variance analysis.
• Ensure compliance with PMO frameworks, delivery standards, and integrated governance routines.
• Risk, Dependency & Change Management
• Identify schedule-related risks, constraints, and blockers, working with delivery teams to mitigate or re‑baseline where required.
• Track and manage interdependencies across projects and third‑party partners to prevent timeline slippage.
• Assess the impact of change requests on the programme schedule and provide evidence-based recommendations.
• Stakeholder Collaboration
• Work closely with Programme and Project Managers to ensure plans are continuously updated, reflective of reality, and aligned with overall delivery architecture.
• Facilitate planning workshops and support delivery teams in adopting best‑practice planning standards.
• Communicate complex planning insights in a clear, structured manner suitable for both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Use MS Project at an expert/advanced level for complex programme planning, critical path analysis, and schedule optimisation.
• Leverage JIRA for change and delivery tracking, ensuring alignment between agile delivery artefacts and high‑level MSP plans.
• Maintain strong working knowledge of Confluence for document management, governance support, and team collaboration.

Desirable Skills/Experience

Although not essential, the following skills are desired by the client:

• Experience within Banking or Financial Services environments.
• Background supporting regulatory, transformation, or large IT change programmes.
• Understanding of agile delivery frameworks and hybrid delivery environments.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please apply now with your updated CV in Microsoft Word/PDF format.

Disclaimer

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.