The Role:
At Morningstar, great people are our most important assets and essential to our success. We look for hardworking, enthusiastic people to join us in our mission to help investors reach their financial goals. In turn, we offer people an environment that fosters an entrepreneurial spirit, dynamic career paths, and rewards employees for helping Morningstar thrive.

We operate in 27 countries. Our global teams delight our clients around the world by creating industry-defining financial products and services. We are a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Our company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, and retirement plan providers and sponsors. We provide data on approximately 550,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on nearly 21 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries.

Morningstar Direct is hiring a dynamic hands-on Program Manager who is highly collaborative, results driven and self-directed. This person will work with internal partners in product management, technology, and operations, service, and sales to execute on high-profile, complex programs.

An ideal candidate has a strong background in program & project management along with implementing process improvements. Experience in strategizing, planning, managing, and implementing concurrent complex strategic projects and processes across global cross-functional teams using hybrid project management practices is required. The ability to be a leader, communicate clearly at all levels, form strong relationships with team members and business partners, and proactively identify and control risks and dependencies is critical in this role. The ability to work in a fast-paced environment is critical.

This position will be based in our Chicago office and requires a hybrid schedule, with 3 days in the office and 2 days remote.

Responsibilities:

• Own Program Management for an assigned group, including Project Prioritization, Strategic Roadmap creation and Stakeholder Alignment.
• Work with cross-functional leaders to determine technology, design, and project management resource requirements to execute our strategy and deliver on commitments.
• Directly manage multiple projects concurrently to include planning and execution working with business, technology, and delivery teams to ensure that project goals are met.
• Work with delivery teams to ensure that project goals are successfully met within budget and to high quality standards.
• Communicate regular program and project level updates across all stakeholder groups.
• Identify and handle dependencies between multiple teams throughout the organization and foster relationships to get things done.
• Identify, monitor, and mitigate program & project risks and assess impact to the overall program.
• Lead program reviews with business and technical partners to report on and facilitate conversations regarding KPI status, progress, resources, and risks.
• May manage, coach, and develop other project managers.
• Support business operations as needed (i.e., Business continuity, release management).
• Coach teams on project management, Lean and agile practices to identify and solve project issues effectively.
• For product development roles, ensure that the program embraces Agile methodology and serve as Agile Coach and Scrum Master where needed.
  

Qualifications:

• A bachelor's degree is required.
• Minimum of 5-7 years of experience and proven track record in hands-on complex technical project and/or program management experience as a Program Manager or Senior Project Manager.
• Proven leadership presence, flexibility, and success in facilitating global team collaboration.
• Ability to handle multiple competing cross program priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Capable of identifying and implementing process improvements.
• Strong leadership, communication, time management, problem solving, and analytical skills.
• Ability to work through differing opinions while contributing consistently and positively in a dynamic, high-paced, and often unpredictable work environment.
• Ability to manage decision-making processes and foster an environment of healthy team debate.
• Comfortable dealing with ambiguity and keeping a team on track.
• Effective at both coaching teams and providing feedback to stakeholders/executives.
• Effective in partnering with leadership to create a collaborative, high performing, and efficient environment.
• Demonstrated experience with traditional and agile project management frameworks.
• 3+ years of experience in Agile development practices (Scrum, Kanban etc.) with Scrum Master certification and success in applying an Agile mindset.

Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to work remotely and collaborate in-person each week. We've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis, at least three days each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.