Director of Capacity Management at Mastercard in London

Director of Capacity Management

Location: London, England (Angel Lane)

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Director of Capacity Management

The opportunity
Vocalink is looking for a Director of Capacity Management to establish and lead our enterprise approach to capacity and capability planning.

This is a strategic leadership role that will give our Executive team a clear, forward-looking view of whether we have the people, skills and capacity required to deliver our strategic priorities, regulatory commitments, operational resilience obligations and technology investment plans.

You'll connect portfolio demand with workforce capacity, identifying where constraints or critical capability gaps could affect delivery and helping leaders make informed decisions about priorities, investment, recruitment, sourcing and the deployment of specialist skills.

Working across Technology, Product, Operations, Finance, HR, Business Change and Agile Release Train leadership, you'll establish the data, governance, processes and tooling needed to create a consistent and trusted enterprise view of capacity.

What you'll do
Build our enterprise capacity management capability
• Establish and lead a consistent enterprise approach to capacity planning across Technology, Product, Operations, Business Change and supporting functions.
• Create a trusted, organisation-wide view of capacity, capability and resource availability.
• Develop capacity forecasts across a rolling 12–36 month horizon, aligned to our portfolio roadmap and strategic priorities.
• Establish the standards, governance and processes that enable sustainable capacity management across Vocalink.

Connect portfolio demand with supply
• Translate current and future portfolio demand into resource and capability requirements.
• Identify capacity constraints, resource bottlenecks and delivery risks before they affect our strategic commitments.
• Develop scenario modelling that enables senior leaders to understand the resource implications of different portfolio and investment choices.
• Provide evidence-based recommendations on recruitment, redeployment, outsourcing, offshore capability and third-party augmentation.
• Play a key role in quarterly planning, Strategic Portfolio Reviews, annual investment planning and longer-term strategic planning.

Shape workforce and capability decisions
• Establish an enterprise view of the skills and specialist capabilities required to deliver our strategy.
• Identify critical capability gaps, succession risks and areas of key-person dependency.
• Partner with HR, Talent Acquisition and functional leaders to translate future capability requirements into actionable workforce plans.
• Inform recruitment, onboarding, insourcing, outsourcing and location strategies for strategic initiatives.

Turn data into executive insight
• Develop reporting and dashboards that give senior leaders clear insight into demand, available capacity, utilisation, capability gaps and emerging risks.
• Improve the quality and integration of capacity and demand data across Workday, Jira and portfolio management tooling.
• Increase automation across capacity reporting and forecasting.
• Explore how AI and advanced analytics can improve forecasting, scenario planning and decision-making.

What you'll bring
We're looking for somebody who can combine strategic thinking with the ability to build a new enterprise capability and influence decisions at the highest levels of the organisation.

Essential experience
• Senior leadership experience in enterprise capacity, portfolio, resource or strategic workforce planning within a complex technology or transformation environment.
• Experience designing or significantly developing an enterprise-scale capacity or demand-planning framework.
• Strong understanding of how portfolio demand, delivery capacity, skills and workforce planning interact.
• Experience of forecasting demand and capacity and using scenario analysis to support investment or prioritisation decisions.
• Experience working within Agile delivery environments, with an understanding of SAFe and/or Lean Portfolio Management principles.
• A track record of turning complex data into clear recommendations for Executive-level stakeholders.
• Strong influencing and communication skills, with the ability to build alignment across multiple functions and senior stakeholder groups.

It would be advantageous if you also have
• Experience in financial services, payments, critical national infrastructure or another highly regulated environment.
• Knowledge of operational resilience, regulatory change and risk management.
• Experience of capacity or workforce analytics using Power BI, SQL, Power Platform or comparable tools.
• Experience introducing AI-enabled forecasting, modelling or planning capabilities.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.