Manager, Strategy & Innovation - Strategic Program Management

Your opportunity

At Schwab, you’re empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us “challenge the status quo” and transform the finance industry together.

The Strategic Management organization is part of Schwab’s broader Strategy & Innovation enterprise and focuses on supporting the design and delivery of critical Schwab-wide initiatives. Currently, the organization is tasked with supporting various cross-enterprise initiatives, including the Scale & Efficiency program (a five-year program representing one of Schwab’s four strategic pillars) and the continual investment portfolio planning process to allocate discretionary technology spend, requiring extensive and granular coordination across the firm. 

The Manager role will report to the Director of Strategic Program Management and will be responsible for supporting the continual investment portfolio planning process, which is the cross-enterprise effort of translating our corporate strategic priorities into meaningful internal technology and business investments.  This effort is among the most critical at Schwab, ensuring ongoing execution of a scaled technology and business planning process to meet client needs and deliver against our strategic goals. This role requires a broad ability to work a broad set of stakeholders spanning all levels of the organization, consolidate data across various sources and perform data-driven analysis, distill complex information into succinct executive level material, and to have a deep understanding of our enterprise as well as technology organizations.   

What you will do: 

• Work closely with our enterprise and technology partners to document and support delivering a scalable, repeatable ongoing tech investment planning process
• Support the various quarterly planning forums being established to deliver a rolling planning process, including our quarterly Executive Council reviews
• Help collate and identify tradeoffs associated with technology investment / tiering decisions to facilitate informed executive decision making
• Organize and synthesize large quantities of information to generate insights through both quantitative and qualitative analysis
• Develop high-impact presentations
• Develop a robust understanding of both enterprise and technology priorities and constraints, to help bridge and translate considerations across stakeholders
• Collaborate closely with our Corporate Strategy team to lead our firm-wide annual strategic planning cycle
• Develop relationships with stakeholders across the firm and cultivate the team’s linkages with financial planning, strategic priorities, and the broader enterprise strategy as well as technology communities at Schwab
• In all aspects of the role, exercise professionalism and integrity in communications and actions, as well as prudent judgment in the handling of confidential strategic, financial, and other sensitive information

What you will gain:

• Opportunity to work with executives across the organization on key investments decisions we make
• Develop credibility and rapport with technology and business partners as you learn about Schwab’s clients and businesses and develop a deeper understanding of key business investments
• Birds eye view on how large organizations manage strategic planning and investment management

What you have

To ensure that we fulfill our promise of “challenging the status quo,” this role has specific qualifications that successful candidates should have.

Required Experience:

• Minimum of 3 years of business strategy-related experience in a mix of consulting and internal strategy groups, and a minimum of 5 years of total work experience
• Top notch analytical and conceptual problem-solving skills, to understand the questions and work and evaluate level of impact and dependency
• Expert in MS Excel, MS PowerPoint
• Experience with financial modeling, strategic planning, and program management
• Superior communication skills, both written and verbal, with demonstrated ability developing materials for C-suite executives
• Highly detail oriented, organized, and comfortable dealing with ambiguity in a dynamic and fast-moving work environment
• Experience supporting running large programs, including oversight of complex initiatives spanning multiple groups and large organizations, across both business and technology initiatives
• Bachelor’s degree required

Preferred Experience:

• Proficient working with enterprise planning tools such as Clarity, Rally, etc.
• Direct technology experience, including supporting technology transformation projects
• Prior experience in financial services
• Experience architecting large enterprises program offices from the top down
• Curiosity & passion for research, industry trends, strategy development, technology, etc.
• Thrives on initiating, building, and cultivating strong authentic relationships inside and outside the group
• Acumen in brokerage, wealth management, individual banking, as well as in technology development and planning
• Master’s degree preferred