Nikolaj Samarec

Programme, Portfolio & PMO Manager — governance, delivery and portfolio tooling across banking, IT and manufacturing

Barcelona, Spain
samarec.nikolaj@gmail.com
+34 657 246 645
linkedin.com/in/Samarec
Citizenship — Czechia

Summary

18+ years leading Project, Programme and PMO functions inside multinational organisations, with the business and IT range to analyse, design and implement processes and solutions end to end. Built and run cross-functional teams across banking, IT and HR, with international postings in Czechia, China, the UK and Spain.

Projects led 10–50 members · 6–18 months · €100k–1m+ Portfolios governed 100–400+ projects · €10–100m+

Professional skills

PMO Manager

  • Established and led PMOs and governance frameworks, ensuring strict compliance with organisational standards while advising the C-suite, project and resource managers.
  • Maintained documentation and KPI dashboards giving full visibility into priorities, costs, schedules and resources, alongside dependency management and risk mitigation.
  • Mentored regional and global Portfolio Managers and PMO Analysts to drive delivery consistency worldwide.
  • Facilitated cross-functional alignment so deliverables stayed synchronised with corporate strategy.

Senior Project Manager

  • Enforced governance frameworks for rigorous compliance, strategic alignment and change management.
  • Defined and calibrated scope, success criteria and budgets to protect business benefits and timely delivery.
  • Orchestrated end-to-end delivery using tailored Agile, Waterfall and hybrid methodologies.
  • Chaired steering committees, delivering executive summaries and insight to senior leadership.

Experience

2024
present

Project Portfolio Management Tools Product Owner

Application Specialist, Planview — JBT Marel, Barcelona

Owns Planview (Portfolios, AgilePlace, ProjectPlace), Smartsheet and Liquid Planner across business and IT, from new functionality to day-to-day stability.

  • Promotes the project management toolset across user groups, automating PMO capabilities and giving data-driven visibility across complex hybrid portfolios.
  • Manages 200+ users: configuration, advisory, demos, training and workshops.
  • Monitors and optimises application performance; handles version upgrades, incidents and problem resolution.
  • Troubleshoots integrations with SAP and Salesforce, shipping fixes and improvements.
  • Works with business stakeholders to translate processes and requirements into solutions.
2023–
2024

Programme Management Officer, AVP

Barclays Corporate and Investment Bank — Prague

Ran the Controls and Advisory PMO for a cross-bank regulatory programme addressing new Laws, Rules and Regulations — £20m+ budget, two+ phases, six+ workstreams, director-level stakeholders.

  • Partnered with workstream PMO Leads to embed governance standards and monthly governance-cycle reporting.
  • Maintained the integrated programme plan and a centralised Change control process.
  • Drove RAID identification, escalation and resolution; monitored MI/KPI dashboards daily to keep governance green.
  • Revitalised historical, overdue Outcome Closure Packs within the first month and kept ongoing ones compliant.
  • Onboarded new PMO members and founded the Prague Site PMO Community of Practice, ~40 PMs and PMOs.
2021–
2022

Programme PMO & Integration Project Manager

Quadient — London

Central PMO governance for the Global Oracle ERP Deployment Transformation Programme — schedule, reporting, KPIs, RAID and dashboards — plus dependent projects. Led a 20+ systems integration stream and owned CDO reporting for strategic IT projects.

2019–
2021

PMO Manager / Project Portfolio Management Lead / Global BA

Adecco Group — Prague

Owned Global IT Project Governance — approval processes, tollgate control — and portfolio reporting across 400+ projects, €100m+, with dotted-line management of 10 Portfolio Managers and PMOs.

  • Ran KPI reporting on alignment, priorities, baselines, dependencies and risk across the global IT portfolio.
  • Built business cases for Digital B2B Products.
2017–
2019

Senior Project Manager — Programme Manager

Home Credit Consumer Finance China — Tianjin

Built a Programme Management Office from the ground up and trained the PMO team; led cross-functional PMs, Agile squads, tribe leads and product owners across digital banking programmes in China and Czechia. 10 projects, 50 FTEs, C-level steering committee.

  • Delivered top-priority programmes: payments-efficiency and cost-saving bank integrations, ePayments (Alipay/WeChat), regulatory change and online lending.
  • Directed programme planning, scheduling, benefits, priorities, dependencies, risk and roll-out.
2014–
2017

PMO Manager — Methodology and PMO Support

Atlas Copco — Prague

Re-established the PMO and revised processes and standards for IT, HR, Finance and Procurement; implemented Planview and SharePoint for 200+ users and a Resource Management framework covering 500+ FTEs.

  • Led a team of 3 central PMOs across governance, status, financials, QA and tollgates.
  • Advised PMs and Resource Managers via portfolio dashboards and KPI consolidation; facilitated reviews for ~100 projects, €10m+.
2011–2014 Project Manager — Atlas Copco, Prague. 8 global cross-functional projects across IT, Finance and HR (DC/network, M&A integration, SEPA/ERP, SAP-payments, MDM, LMS).
2010–2011 IT Project Manager — IBM, Brno. European infrastructure projects: server virtualisation, network transformation.
2007–2009 Project Manager — CreditInfo Solutions, Prague. Software delivery for banks' retail lending.
2004–2007 General Manager — Solutions To Rent, Dnipro. Built an international offshore delivery team of 10.
2003–2004 Sales Manager (AIESEC traineeship) — Satjam, Ostrava.
2000–2003 IT Project Coordinator / SWIFT Analyst — PrivatBank, Dnipro.

Reference

IT skills

MS Windows, Office, Excel (VLOOKUP, pivots, macros), Visio, PowerPoint · Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps · MS Teams, SharePoint · ServiceNow, TOPdesk, Workato · Planview Portfolios, AgilePlace, ProjectPlace · Smartsheet · MS Project, MS Planner · Navigator PPM, Clarity PPM · JIRA, Confluence, Azure DevOps · SAP, Oracle ERP, Salesforce (user) · SQL, HTML, XML, BPMN, API · SDLC, Agile/Scrum · SWIFT, ISO 20022

Certificates

  • PMP®
  • PRINCE2® & PRINCE2 Agile®
  • Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
  • P3O®
  • ITIL® V3 Foundation
  • Planview Portfolios Administrator

Languages

  • English, Czech — fluent
  • Ukrainian, Russian — native
  • Spanish, German — basic

Education & other

  • M.A. International Economics and Finance
  • Driving licence — category B
  • Skipper licence — category B (HR), RYA, ICC