Project Manager - ELS

Blackhawk Network is a prepaid and payments network, a market leader in card-based financial solutions and the largest provider of third-party gift cards. Blackhawk Network develops unique products in easy-to-use formats and delivers them to consumers through an exclusive network of leading grocery, mass, drug, convenience, and specialty retailers in the United States, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. This proprietary network includes over 80,000 stores and reaches more than 165 million consumers each week. Headquartered in Pleasanton, California, Blackhawk Network has offices in New Jersey, Chicago, Toronto, Mexico City, Sydney and the United Kingdom.  

The branded display “Gift Card Mall” is designed as a compact in-store prepaid card destination that holds a wide range of card offerings (500+ in the US). This innovative program provides a turnkey solution for increasing customer traffic and basket size while delivering one of the store’s highest profits per square meter.  The company also distributes prepaid telecom cards and prepaid (open loop) gift and debit cards while continuing to expand the gift card product categories and channels of distribution.

In this role, you will be acting as a program manager for various new business onboardings. You will provide project management support to Sales and Account Management for New Business Relationships and on many different and complex components of the implementation projects. The scope may range from new strategic capabilities across various product lines and business units (such as Distribution, Telecom, Digital/Online, Financial Services, and International). You will work cross functionally with develop and execute creative solutions while keeping impacted teams organized and management engaged is critical.

• Independently develop and manage the project plan and partner with discipline leads and project teams to execute on plans.
• Document scope and requirements overviews for all stakeholders, managing related timelines, prioritization, and deliverables.
• Drive initial onboarding of new products and programs.
• Monitor day-to-day activities of the project and ensure work is progressing as planned.
• Manage schedules and overall project organization to ensure requirements and project delivery dates are clearly communicated, understood, and executed upon.
• Effectively and efficiently plan and prioritize all resources working across project(s) based on scope of work and project goals.
• Actively monitor project risks and scope creep to foresee/identify potential problems and proactively identify solutions to address them in advance; proactively communicate status to key stakeholders.
• Conduct project post mortems and proactively identify opportunities for improvement to all processes and tools used in the execution of project activities.
• Document new and existing processes or procedures.
• Identify and execute opportunities to create operational efficiencies for existing programs, with an emphasis on scalability and speed to market
• Responsible for all operational tasks as it relates to program management.  This includes, but is not limited to, managing the product set up and testing process, coordinating and overseeing launch/project execution, merchandising coordination, and develop transition plans to cleanly transfer account management responsibilities after launch.
• Collaborate with various internal teams to execute initiatives and address partner concerns; solve for challenges.
• Be available to travel approximately 10% of the time.
• Be capable of learning new product lines and understanding the various solutions we offer our partners.
• Understanding contractual obligations and ensuring projects adhere to established budgets relating to fixtures and merchandising.

• Bachelor’s Degree required
• 3-4 years of product/project management experience in a product-driven environment
• Ideal candidate will Account Management or Customer Service Experience.
• Experience in Translation- or Analytics-related project management.
• Experience working in cross-functional teams and leading by influence.
• Experience managing external client and vendor relationships (development vendor management experience a plus)
• Experience developing and/or refining system specifications, and ability to identify and prioritize system/project requirements.
• Ability to understand and document project requirements, dependencies and as-is/to-be process flows.
• Has a strong aptitude in influencing without direct authority- A successful candidate will be able to not only engage key stakeholders but also synthesize an argument, negotiate differing viewpoints and drive to consensus.
• Enjoys a fast-paced learning environment and has an ability to understand processes end to end.
• Ability to create, manage, and deliver against large, interdependent project plans.
• Excellent verbal, written, presentation and interpersonal communications skills.
• Understanding of business and functional requirements.
• Strong attention to detail and focus on task completion is critical.