Principal, EPMO Governance Program Manager
Description
Purpose: This addendum outlines essential, role‑specific responsibilities and expectations for a specialized position within a designated Job Family. It serves to supplement the Core job description and may be used for employment advertising, professional development and performance management purposes.
Please refer to the Core Job Description document for core essential functions, education and experience requirements, scope, work environment and qualification details.
Functional Position Summary:
The EPMO Governance Program Manager is a professional role responsible for defining, operationalizing, and maintaining program governance across the IMO and future EPMO Operations function. This role supports near-term merger integration stabilization by ensuring workstreams have the required governance artifacts, cadence, controls, escalation routines, decision documentation, RAID discipline, and regulatory-ready evidence in place.
This role partners closely with IMO leadership, EPMO leadership, Business workstream leaders, Technology, Finance, Risk, Compliance, Legal, Internal Audit, vendors, and M&A integration SMEs to strengthen governance discipline, meeting effectiveness, documentation quality, and executive visibility. The role will help ensure program documentation is complete, organized, controlled, and retrievable to support leadership oversight, auditability, and regulatory readiness.
The EPMO Governance Program Manager will also help build reusable EPMO Operations capabilities, including governance standards, meeting routines, artifact management, decision governance, escalation protocols, RAID discipline, control evidence practices, and delivery framework consistency. This role requires experience supporting large-scale M&A integration, enterprise transformation, EPMO/IMO operations, and complex cross-functional governance in a regulated environment.
Role Specific Essential Functions:
- Define, operationalize, and maintain IMO/EPMO governance routines, including meeting cadence, required attendees, forum purpose, decision rights, escalation paths, and reporting expectations.
- Partner with IMO leadership, EPMO leadership, workstream leaders, Program Managers, Project Managers, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Legal, Internal Audit, Finance, vendors, and M&A SMEs to ensure governance expectations are clear and consistently followed.
- Establish and maintain governance standards, templates, and artifacts, including meeting materials, status reports, decision logs, RAID logs, dependency logs, issue escalation materials, readiness documentation, and control evidence.
- Create and maintain a centralized repository for program documentation, governance artifacts, decisions, risks, issues, action items, status reports, readiness evidence, and regulatory/audit support materials.
- Support regulatory readiness by ensuring key program documentation is complete, organized, version-controlled, accessible, and aligned to expected governance and control evidence standards.
- Partner with workstream owners to confirm required artifacts are in place, current, accurate, and aligned to program governance requirements.
- Track and monitor decision aging, open risks, unresolved issues, escalations, dependencies, and readiness gaps to support timely leadership action.
- Prepare executive governance materials, meeting agendas, leadership updates, committee materials, and documentation packages for IMO/EPMO leadership forums.
- Support governance reviews, readiness reviews, plan quality reviews, control reviews, and other program oversight routines required for merger execution.
- Help reinforce workstream-level decision accountability by clarifying where decisions should be made, when escalation is required, and how decisions are documented.
- Partner with Program Managers and workstream teams to ensure governance artifacts support practical Conversion Day 1 / Integration Day 1 execution needs while preserving documentation for future-state EPMO use.
- Support alignment between governance cadence, executive reporting, financial reporting, integrated planning, RAID discipline, dependency management, and regulatory evidence management.
- Identify governance gaps, inconsistent documentation practices, missing artifacts, unclear escalation paths, and control evidence concerns, and recommend corrective actions.
- Contribute to the design and maturation of future EPMO Operations capabilities, including governance frameworks, standard operating routines, artifact controls, delivery standards, and oversight practices.
- Operate independently across complex, cross-functional governance issues requiring judgment, organization, stakeholder coordination, and strong follow-through.
Role Specific Expectations and Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Risk Management, Operations, Technology, Program Management, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
- 10+ years of relevant experience in program governance, EPMO/PMO operations, merger integration support, enterprise transformation, risk/control management, regulatory readiness, project/program oversight, or related disciplines.
- Demonstrated experience supporting large-scale M&A integration, merger readiness, enterprise transformation, or complex cross-functional implementation programs.
- Strong experience working within or supporting an IMO, EPMO, PMO, Transformation Office, Risk/Control function, or large-scale program governance environment.
- Strong understanding of program governance practices, including meeting cadence, decision rights, escalation paths, RAID discipline, dependency tracking, decision logs, action tracking, change control, readiness reviews, and executive reporting.
- Experience establishing, organizing, and maintaining governance artifacts, program documentation, control evidence, committee materials, status reporting, and leadership decision records.
- Experience supporting regulatory-ready documentation, auditability, control evidence practices, and documentation discipline in financial services, banking, credit unions, or another highly regulated environment.
- Strong knowledge of M&A integration execution, including workstream governance, readiness tracking, business readiness, technology readiness, operational cutover, regulatory evidence, and executive oversight.
- Experience with project portfolio management, collaboration, and documentation tools such as Capital Edge, Clarity PPM, Planview, ServiceNow SPM, Smartsheet, Microsoft Project, SharePoint, Teams, Jira, Power BI, Excel, or similar tools.
- Strong financial acumen with the ability to understand how governance, risks, issues, decisions, and delivery progress connect to program cost, resource impacts, financial exposure, and business outcomes.
- Ability to identify governance gaps, documentation gaps, decision delays, inconsistent controls, unclear ownership, and execution risks.
- Ability to translate complex governance, risk, issue, and readiness information into concise executive materials and actionable next steps.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to engage senior leaders, business owners, technology leaders, Finance, Risk, Compliance, Legal, Audit, vendors, Program Managers, and workstream teams.
- Strong organizational skills and attention to detail, with the ability to maintain accurate records, version control, documentation quality, and regulatory-ready evidence.
- Ability to influence without direct authority and drive consistency, accountability, and follow-through across cross-functional teams.
- Strong judgment, problem-solving, and conceptual thinking skills, with the ability to create structure in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
- Traditional medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Generous 401K matching per pay period
- Flexible Time-Off (FTO): First Tech has adopted a flexible time-off policy intended to allow executive-level employees to take time off, as needed
- 11 paid federal holidays
- Special employee pricing on lending products such as mortgage, auto, and personal loans (eligibility for special employee pricing is subject to standard account requirements and underwriting criteria)