Manager, Strategy & Transformation (Financial Services)

The Team

 Join a team of talented professionals with deep business and finance transformation experience who guide clients through major transactions, including M&A, carve-outs, IPOs, system implementations, and organizational change. We help organizations define business strategy and execute transformation initiatives across operational accounting, financial process improvement, financial technology enablement, FP&A, liquidity and cash reporting, regulatory reporting, risk management, and transactions.

Your Impact

As a Manager within our Financial Services Strategy & Transformation practice, you will lead teams solving complex and often ambiguous challenges for banking and financial services clients undergoing significant change.

You will bring subject matter expertise across multiple financial services and transformation domains, combined with the adaptability and judgment to lead through unfamiliar challenges where the answer or path forward may not yet be defined.

Our work rarely fits neatly within a single function or predefined playbook. You will be expected to connect business strategy, operations, technology, data, risk, controls, and implementation considerations to design solutions that work across organizational boundaries.

As a Manager, you will take accountability for the problem, solution, team, and outcome. You will work directly with client leaders to define objectives, establish the approach, lead solution design, manage execution, and drive decisions—while developing and enabling the team around you.

What You'll Do

• Lead the design of practical business solutions that translate strategic objectives and complex challenges into executable changes across process, people, technology, data, and controls
• Own complex client problems from initial definition through solution design and implementation, establishing the approach and direction with limited senior-level oversight
• Apply subject matter expertise across multiple banking, financial services, and transformation domains to shape solutions and provide informed perspectives to clients
• Connect business, operational, technology, data, risk, regulatory, and financial considerations to solve problems that span traditional organizational boundaries
• Lead teams through ambiguous or unfamiliar challenges, creating structure, establishing priorities, and determining the path forward when a predefined approach does not exist
• Develop future-state operating models, capabilities, processes, business requirements, controls, governance structures, and technology-enabled solutions
• Evaluate solution alternatives and lead clients through decisions and tradeoffs related to business value, customer experience, complexity, risk, technology, regulatory considerations, and ability to execute
• Identify cross-functional and enterprise implications of proposed solutions, including impacts to customers, employees, processes, systems, data, controls, risk, and organizational structures
• Serve as the day-to-day advisor to client leaders, bringing perspectives and recommendations rather than simply facilitating activities or reporting status
• Lead solution design workshops, executive working sessions, stakeholder interviews, and decision forums across business, operations, technology, risk, finance, and other functions
• Bridge business and technology teams to ensure business objectives are translated into clear requirements and technology solutions deliver the intended business outcomes
• Translate solution designs into actionable implementation roadmaps, workplans, process changes, requirements, controls, testing strategies, readiness activities, and execution plans
• Lead workstreams within complex bank mergers and integrations, system conversions, regulatory transformation, operating model changes, process and control improvement, and technology-enabled transformation
• Anticipate cross-functional risks, dependencies, and execution challenges and proactively drive them toward resolution
• Move comfortably between executive-level strategy and detailed execution, understanding when to elevate the conversation and when to get into the details with the team
• Manage and develop Senior Consultants and Consultants, providing direction and coaching without creating unnecessary dependency on senior leadership
• Review and challenge team output to ensure analysis is sound, solutions are practical, and deliverables communicate a clear point of view
• Manage workstream scope, timelines, quality, economics, risks, and client expectations
• Identify emerging client needs and opportunities where Highspring can provide additional value
• Build trusted client relationships that extend beyond individual deliverables or projects

Your Experience

Minimum Qualifications

• BA/BS in Business, Finance, Accounting, Information Systems, Operations, or related discipline
• 5+ years of experience in banking, financial services consulting, business transformation, or a related environment
• Demonstrated subject matter expertise across multiple banking, financial services, or transformation domains
• Experience across multiple areas such as banking operations, lending, deposits, treasury management, payments, finance, risk and controls, regulatory change, technology, data, M&A integration, or operating model transformation
• Demonstrated experience independently leading complex workstreams, transformation initiatives, or business solution design efforts
• Ability to take an ambiguous client problem, structure the approach, lead a team through the analysis, and develop an executable solution
• Experience designing future-state business solutions across process, people, technology, data, controls, and operating models
• Demonstrated ability to connect issues across functions and anticipate broader business, operational, technology, data, risk, and regulatory implications
• Experience leading cross-functional teams and coordinating stakeholders with competing priorities
• Strong learning agility and the ability to quickly build sufficient depth in unfamiliar or adjacent domains to effectively lead the work
• Experience leading client workshops, working sessions, and decision forums
• Strong executive communication skills with the ability to synthesize complex issues into clear recommendations, tradeoffs, and decisions
• Demonstrated ability to manage and develop junior team members while maintaining accountability for quality and outcomes
• Comfort operating in fast-moving environments where priorities, requirements, and available information may evolve
• Strong Microsoft Office experience (PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook)
• Willingness to travel at least 25%
• Flexibility to be onsite with clients or in Highspring office up to 3-4 days/week

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading workstreams within a bank merger, acquisition integration, core banking conversion, regulatory transformation, or enterprise-wide change program
• Experience with financial modeling
• Experience working with banks experiencing significant growth, increasing organizational complexity, or preparing to cross regulatory asset thresholds
• Experience helping financial institutions enhance operating models, governance, risk management, controls, data, reporting, technology, or business capabilities as organizational and regulatory expectations increase
• Experience leading future-state operating model, process, capability, requirements, or business solution design initiatives
• Experience leading business readiness, UAT, data conversion, implementation testing, cutover planning, command center, or post-implementation stabilization activities
• Experience leading initiatives that require close coordination between business and technology teams
• Experience with FIS, Jack Henry, Fiserv, or other major banking platforms
• Familiarity with regulatory expectations applicable to growing and increasingly complex banking organizations
• Experience managing consulting engagement scope, delivery, teams, and economics
• MBA or relevant advanced degree or professional certification