Programme Delivery Executive/Programme Director

Location London, United Kingdom

Shape the future of insurance transformation at some of the industry's most important organisations. As a Programme Delivery Executive (PDE)/Programme Director with Sapiens, along with a team of other PDEs, you will lead complex, enterprise-wide customer Programmes that sit at the heart of digital and AI-driven change. Partnering with C-suite stakeholders and Sapiens leadership, you'll drive delivery excellence, accelerate customer value, and ensure every project delivers measurable business outcomes.

This is a unique opportunity for a seasoned software delivery leader to combine deep insurance/financial services technology expertise, commercial acumen, and AI-native ways of working to influence both customer success and long-term growth.

More about the role and it’s purpose …

You will own the execution and delivery integrity of Sapiens customer Programmes. This role sits within the Delivery Success team and is the primary accountable leader for Programme governance, milestone management, and value delivery inside a customer engagement.

You will be a senior delivery leader with deep insurance and financial services fluency, commercial discipline, and the judgement to run complex, multi-workstream Programmes at pace. Accountable for milestones delivered to agreed exit criteria, risks surfaced before they become crises, and a delivery model that shortens customer time-to-value.

You will run an AI-native delivery model with a progressively automated execution layer, freeing the role for discernment, governance, and the customer relationship. In partnership with Customer Success, the PDE stewards the Customer Value Journey through to long‑term value realisation - with NRR, ARR, account margin, and reference ability as shared responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities:

01 - Programme Delivery & Commercial Outcomes

• End-to-end delivery ownership: Leads the full Programme lifecycle from initiation through planning, execution, and closure. Accountable for delivery on time, within scope, and within budget across all workstreams – including platform implementation, integration, data migration, and business change.
• Time to Value: Owns the pace at which the customer realises measurable outcomes. Sets the time‑to‑value baseline at programme initiation, tracks it at every milestone, and uses delivery decisions to shorten it. Accountable for committed implementation timelines - and for turning outperformance into a commercial conversation.
• AI‑led SaaS implementation velocity: Moves Programmes toward faster implementation cycles consistent with Sapiens’ AI‑led SaaS delivery model. Understands the configuration‑over‑customisation discipline and applies it to keep Programmes on the standard implementation trajectory that maximises customer time‑to‑value.
• Commercial Outcomes – In partnership with Customer Success, owns NRR contribution of the customer portfolio. Knows the expansion levers, drives them, and reports against them.
• Growth - Identifies upsell and cross‑sell potential during delivery and converts insight into pipeline opportunities.
• AI‑native execution model: Operates a delivery model in which AI handles the execution layer: status tracking, risk summarisation, documentation, meeting outputs, and reporting cadences. Directs AI tools, evaluates their output, and uses them to accelerate Programme pace and free team capacity for judgement‑intensive work.

02 - Milestone Management & Exit Criteria

• Milestone ownership: Defines, manages, and tracks Programme milestones with precision. Each milestone has a clear definition of done, an agreed exit criteria, and formal customer acceptance before the Programme advances. This is the primary mechanism for preventing red projects.
• Exit criteria discipline: Works with the customer to agree exit criteria at the start of each phase – not at the end. Any customer request that falls outside accepted exit criteria is a natural change order, not a negotiation. The PDE holds this boundary with clarity and without conflict.
• Milestone‑based billing alignment: Ensures that delivery milestones align with commercial billing triggers. Milestone acceptance by the customer is both a delivery gate and a commercial event. The PDE manages both dimensions in coordination with the Customer Success team.
• Risk and dependency management: Maintains a live Programme risk register. Identifies, assesses, and mitigates risks before they become issues. Manages interdependencies across workstreams, vendors, and internal Sapiens teams. Surfaces conflicts and trade‑offs early and drives resolution with pace.

03 – Insurance & Financial Services Industry Fluency

• Domain depth: Builds and maintains a deep understanding of the customer's business - P&L drivers, operating model, competitive pressures, and regulatory environment. Speaks insurance fluently, or has fluency in financial services technology.
• Insurance Ontology and AutonomousInsurer thesis: Carries the Sapiens point of view into every engagement - articulating why a shared data model across the insurance value chain creates structural advantage, and what the AI‑native insurance operating model looks like. Uses both to elevate the conversation beyond current project scope.

04 - Proactive Customer Relationship & Escalation Management

• Customer relationship ownership at the Programme level: Holds the customer relationship at the C‑suite level on substance and trust. Is the person the customer calls when something genuinely matters.
• Proactive escalation management: Acts ahead of the problem, not in response to it. Reads signals early – customer frustration, delivery drift, scope ambiguity – and raises the difficult conversation before it becomes a crisis. Foresees escalations and prevents them through structured, proactive management.
• Partners closely with the account's Customer Success Manager — the PDE owns delivery execution, CS owns the commercial relationship and expansion. Together they own the Customer Value Journey, with a clean, documented handoff. Customer health is a shared metric.
• Cross‑functional team orchestration: Manages delivery across blended teams: Sapiens employees, offshore delivery resources, SI partners, and customer‑side teams. Ensures alignment, accountability, and pace across all.
• Team leadership and development: Builds capability with intention, treating team development as a commercial lever rather than an HR task. Leads the full talent lifecycle with candour and integrity.
• Sapiens ambassadorship: Carries the Sapiens point of view into customer environments. Knows the Insurance Ontology argument, the AutonomousInsurer thesis, and the AI moat – and can hold them in a room.
• Leads the Programme's PM team, setting standards and driving accountability. As the account's delivery standard‑setter, the PDE defines the level the team performs to.

Desired Skills and Experience:

• 15–18 years of experience leading complex enterprise software Programmes, with at least 5 years in senior delivery leadership. Proven track record managing multi‑workstream Programmes in insurance or financial technology environments.
• Deep insurance domain knowledge is preferred: Life & Pension, Property & Casualty, or equivalent specialty lines. Experience in fintech or broader financial services technology will also be considered. Familiarity with Policy Administration Systems and the insurance technology landscape - or comparable core platforms in financial services - is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated expertise in milestone‑based delivery governance: exit criteria design, scope control, change order management, and delivery framework design at enterprise scale.
• Experience leading global cross‑functional teams including SI partners, offshore delivery resources, and customer‑side teams in a matrixed environment.
• AI transformation experience: practical comfort directing AI tools across Programme management functions, evaluating AI‑generated outputs, and operating an AI‑native delivery model.
• Programme financial management: budget ownership, forecasting, cost‑to‑serve awareness, and milestone‑based billing alignment.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills. Comfortable running steering committees, presenting to senior customer leadership, and managing difficult conversations with clarity.
• Preferred: experience with Scaled Agile (SAFe), hybrid delivery models, and SaaS implementation Programmes.
• PMP, PgMP, or PRINCE2 or similar certification is preferred
• Relevant technical or business post‑graduate qualifications are a plus.

We Are

Sapiens International Corporation N.V. is a global leader of AI‑centric, SaaS‑based insurance software, delivering hyper‑relevant experiences that are efficient, compliant, and innovative. With agile intelligence, Sapiens' solutions turn real‑time data and human insight into precise action at every moment, across every risk.

The Sapiens platform includes agentic workflows accelerating every capability across policy, underwriting, claims, reinsurance, decisioning, and finance and compliance.

With more than 600 insurers in over 30 countries running on Sapiens, our deep industry expertise is the foundation of our long‑term relationships, from initial implementation through to modernization and market transformation.

Sapiens is headquartered in London, serving customers in property and casualty, life, reinsurance, specialty, and workers’ compensation from offices across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific.

#J-18808-Ljbffr