Nikolaj Samarec

Project/Programme & 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

(select type of role)

Career at a glance — click a role to jump to it below. Oldest → present, left to right.

Apr 2024
Present(2y 6m)

Project Portfolio Management Tools Product Owner / Implementation PM

JBT Marel [Manufacturing / IT] | Barcelona, Spain

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.
  • Expanded data sources and safeguarded data integrity for Power BI reporting.
  • Resolved long-standing SAP and Salesforce data issues by learning the Workato integration tool and implementing fixes directly.
  • Onboarded new teams to Planview Portfolios for Project, Resource Capacity and Task Management.
  • Reviewed the Planview user base, identified unused licenses and saved the company £30k annually.
Apr 2023
Mar 2024(1y)

Programme Management Officer, AVP

Barclays Corporate and Investment Bank [Banking] | Prague, Czechia

Ran the Controls and Advisory PMO for a cross-bank regulatory programme addressing new Laws, Rules and Regulations — 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.
Sep 2021
Jun 2022(10m)

Programme PMO / Integration Project Manager

Quadient [IT] | London, United Kingdom

Central PMO governance for the Global Oracle ERP Deployment Transformation Programme — schedule, reporting, KPIs, RAID and dashboards — plus dependent projects.

  • Managed the dependent-projects portfolio: status reporting, inter-dependencies, milestones, deliverables, risk and change management.
  • Served as Project Manager for a 20+ integration stream (e.g. ADP).
  • Supported the Top 10 IT projects/programmes portfolio, reporting to CDO & CDO-1 and coaching PMs on senior management reporting.
Apr 2019
Aug 2021(2y 5m)

PMO Manager / Project Portfolio Management Lead / Global BA

Adecco Group [HR / IT] | Prague, Czechia

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.
  • Established and chaired weekly Project Approval Board meetings with CIO-1 level executives.
  • Owned Global IT PMO KPI reporting — Projects Success Rate, Data Quality, Go-Live, RAID and Status — across the portfolio.
Aug 2017
Apr 2019(1y 9m)

Senior Project Manager / Programme PMO Lead

Home Credit Consumer Finance China [Banking] | Tianjin, China

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.
Jun 2014
Jun 2017(3y 1m)

PMO Manager — Methodology and PMO Support

Atlas Copco [Manufacturing / IT] | Prague, Czechia

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+.
  • Built Power BI PMO dashboards linked to Planview, and created/maintained a PPM tool wiki with on-site and virtual training.
Oct 2011
May 2014(2y 8m)

Project Manager

Atlas Copco [Manufacturing / IT] | Prague, Czechia

Delivered global cross-functional projects for internal international customers, remote/virtual teams and Finance, IT and HR domains, working with subcontractors and external vendors. 8 projects completed.

  • IT: infrastructure (data centre, network), M&A IT integration.
  • Finance: SEPA/ERP, intercompany invoice reconciliation, SAP payments.
  • HR: MDM, LMS. Also conducted PM training.
Feb 2010
Oct 2011(1y 9m)

IT Project Manager

IBM [IT] | Brno, Czechia

Managed European IT infrastructure projects for an external customer: server virtualisation and network transformation.

Feb 2007
Dec 2009(2y 11m)

Project Manager

CreditInfo Solutions [Banking] | Prague, Czechia

Led and delivered software development and implementation projects for banks' retail lending operations.

Sep 2004
Jan 2007(2y 5m)

General Manager

Solutions To Rent [IT outsourcing] | Dnipro, Ukraine

Established an international clients' delivery offshore team, hired and led 10 people, and extended the client service offering.

Sep 2003
Aug 2004(1y)

Sales Manager

Satjam (AIESEC traineeship) [Manufacturing] | Ostrava, Czechia

Jun 2000
Sep 2003(3y 4m)

IT Project Coordinator / SWIFT Analyst

PrivatBank [Banking] | Dnipro, Ukraine

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
0 / 0