Expert Project Manager - IT Strategy

A major Belgian bank in Brussels needs an Expert Project Manager in its IT strategy office: a trusted advisor to the CIO. You deliver short, high-impact recommendations on technology direction — legacy modernisation, application rationalisation, preparation of cross-border collaboration — under fixed timelines. Success is clarity, pragmatism and adoption, not the length of the analysis.

Responsibilities: deliver actionable, synthetic recommendations to the CIO on critical technology directions under fixed timelines; deep-dive technical issues fast, extract the core strategic question, and write the executive so-what; lead short-lived expert groups so dilemmas reach alignment and a concrete outcome; prioritise adoption and impact over exhaustive analysis.

Business experience: move from hands-on IT into a strategic or transversal role (strategy consulting, internal strategy office, or chief-of-staff / advisor in a large IT organisation) is mandatory; banking or financial services, ideally retail banking (core banking, payments, channels, regulation, legacy) is preferable.

Functional experience: turn technical deep-dives into a strategic 'so what?' for executive management (mandatory); assemble and lead ad-hoc cross-functional expert groups on strategic IT dilemmas (mandatory).

Technical experience: hands-on IT (enterprise or solution architecture, IT analysis, tech lead, or similar) with a minimum of 10 years (mandatory); modern IT paradigms (cloud, API-led connectivity, core-banking modernisation, data architectures, DevSecOps) (mandatory); agentic AI and AI-driven cyber threats (mandatory).

Language requirements: English (fluent, mandatory), Dutch (good, not mandatory), French (good, not mandatory).

Soft skills: architect or analyst mindset with a strategist's filter; pragmatic (a solid recommendation in two weeks beats a perfect analysis in three months); influence without authority and network-building; executive communication (clear PowerPoint and memo writing for a CIO); comfortable with ambiguity, shifting priorities and high autonomy. Start date 2026-11-20, duration 13 months, estimated daily rate 800-980 EUR (Rivant market estimate).