As a Project Manager at Voya Financial, you are the driving force behind the strategic initiatives that power our retirement, investment, and employee benefits solutions. You will sit at the critical intersection of business strategy and technical execution, ensuring that complex, cross-functional projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the highest standards of quality. This is not just a role about tracking milestones; it is about enabling our business to operate more efficiently and deliver outstanding value to our clients.

Your impact will be felt across the organization, particularly within our Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO). Whether you are rolling out a new digital portal for retirement planning, leading a massive data migration, or streamlining internal compliance processes, your work directly influences our operational resilience and customer experience. Because Voya Financial operates in a highly regulated industry, the projects you lead carry significant scale and complexity, requiring a deep understanding of both technology and financial services.

You can expect to collaborate with diverse teams, including software engineering, product management, risk, and compliance. The environment here is collaborative but fast-paced, demanding leaders who can navigate ambiguity and bring structure to large-scale enterprise challenges. Stepping into this role means taking ownership of initiatives that shape the financial futures of millions of Americans.

Expect your interviews to be heavily behavioral, focusing on your past experiences and how they translate to the challenges we face at Voya Financial. The questions below represent patterns observed in our interview process; use them to practice structuring your responses using the STAR method.

Project Lifecycle & Execution

These questions test your foundational ability to plan, execute, and deliver projects effectively.

• Walk me through the lifecycle of the most complex project you have ever managed.
• How do you determine the critical path of a project, and how do you monitor it?

`

Preparing for your interview at Voya Financial requires a strategic approach that goes beyond memorizing project management frameworks. You must demonstrate how you apply your expertise to solve real-world business problems in a corporate financial setting.

Role-related knowledge – You are expected to possess a deep understanding of project management methodologies, including Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid approaches. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to select the right framework for a given project and your familiarity with enterprise tools like Jira, Confluence, and MS Project. You can demonstrate strength here by speaking clearly about how you have tailored methodologies to fit specific team dynamics and regulatory constraints.

Problem-solving ability – Financial services projects rarely go exactly according to plan. Interviewers want to see how you structure challenges, anticipate risks, and pivot when road blocks emerge. Be prepared to walk through your decision-making process when faced with scope creep, budget constraints, or sudden shifts in business priorities.

Leadership and Influence – As a Project Manager, you must lead without formal authority. We evaluate your capacity to build consensus, communicate effectively with executive stakeholders, and mobilize cross-functional teams. Strong candidates will share concrete examples of how they have negotiated competing priorities and aligned disparate groups around a unified goal.

Culture fit and values – Voya Financial values continuous improvement, integrity, and a strong work-life balance built on mutual respect. You will be assessed on your collaborative spirit and your ability to foster a positive, accountable team environment. Showcasing your adaptability and commitment to transparent communication will strongly align you with our core values.

The interview process for a Project Manager at Voya Financial is designed to be thorough, structured, and deeply focused on your past experiences. You will generally begin with an initial recruiter screen to assess your baseline qualifications, compensation expectations, and general fit for the EPMO. If successful, you will move on to a hiring manager interview, which dives deeper into your resume, your project portfolio, and your specific experiences leading complex enterprise initiatives.

Following the hiring manager screen, expect a series of panel or loop interviews. These sessions typically involve cross-functional stakeholders, such as engineering leads, product managers, and senior business leaders. The focus during these rounds is heavily behavioral, relying on the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method to uncover how you handle conflict, manage risk, and drive execution. Our interviewing philosophy emphasizes collaboration and data-driven decision-making, so expect questions that probe how you measure success and keep teams aligned.

What makes this process distinctive is the strong emphasis on regulatory and enterprise awareness. Because you are interviewing at a financial institution, interviewers will look for your ability to balance aggressive delivery timelines with strict compliance and risk management protocols.

`

`

This visual timeline outlines the typical progression of your interviews, from the initial recruiter screen to the final behavioral and cross-functional panels. You should use this map to pace your preparation, ensuring you have targeted STAR stories ready for both technical project management screens and broader stakeholder interviews. Keep in mind that specific stages may vary slightly depending on your seniority level, such as whether you are interviewing for an intern position or a VP-level role.

Program and Project Delivery

This area evaluates your core competency in moving a project from inception to successful closure. It matters because Voya Financial relies on its EPMO to execute strategic goals with precision and predictability. Strong performance here means you can confidently explain how you build project charters, define scope, manage budgets, and enforce timelines without stifling team momentum.

Be ready to go over:

• Scope Management – How you define boundaries and prevent scope creep during execution.
• Resource Allocation – Techniques for balancing team workloads across competing enterprise priorities.
• Methodology Application – Knowing when to apply Agile vs. Waterfall based on project constraints.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Earned Value Management (EVM), advanced capacity planning, and portfolio-level dependency mapping.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through a time when a critical project was falling behind schedule. How did you identify the root cause, and what steps did you take to get it back on track?"
• "Describe your process for building a project plan from scratch when the business requirements are still ambiguous."
• "How do you handle a situation where a key resource is suddenly pulled onto another high-priority project?"

Stakeholder Management & Communication

As a Project Manager, your ability to communicate effectively is just as important as your technical skills. This area assesses how you interact with sponsors, team members, and external vendors. Interviewers look for candidates who can tailor their communication style to their audience, whether they are presenting a high-level dashboard to a VP or discussing technical blockers with a lead engineer.

Be ready to go over:

• Executive Reporting – Creating concise, actionable status updates for steering committees.
• Conflict Resolution – Mediating disagreements between business and technology teams.
• Expectation Management – Delivering bad news gracefully and proposing constructive alternatives.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Organizational change management strategies and vendor negotiation tactics.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to deliver bad news to a senior stakeholder regarding a project's budget or timeline."
• "Give an example of how you gained alignment between two departments that had completely different goals for a shared project."
• "How do you ensure that remote or distributed team members stay engaged and informed throughout the project lifecycle?"

Risk Management & Problem Solving

In the financial services sector, mitigating risk is a fundamental part of the job. This evaluation area tests your foresight and your ability to create robust contingency plans. A strong candidate does not just react to problems; they proactively identify risks, quantify their potential impact, and establish mitigation strategies long before issues arise.

Be ready to go over:

• Risk Identification – Frameworks for brainstorming and categorizing project risks.
• Mitigation Planning – Developing actionable plans to reduce the likelihood or impact of negative events.
• Issue Escalation – Knowing exactly when and how to escalate a blocker to senior leadership.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Regulatory compliance risk assessments and disaster recovery planning.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Describe a time when an unforeseen risk materialized during a critical phase of your project. How did you manage it?"
• "Walk me through your framework for creating and maintaining a project risk register."
• "How do you balance the need to deliver quickly with the need to ensure strict regulatory compliance?"

Agile Methodologies & EPMO Standards

While Voya Financial utilizes various methodologies, a strong grasp of Agile principles and standard EPMO governance is critical. You will be evaluated on your ability to facilitate Agile ceremonies, manage backlogs, and enforce enterprise standards without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

Be ready to go over:

• Agile Ceremonies – Facilitating effective sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives.
• Metrics and KPIs – Tracking velocity, burn-down charts, and defect rates to measure team health.
• Governance – Ensuring projects comply with EPMO stage-gates and documentation requirements.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Scaling Agile frameworks (SAFe) and transitioning teams from Waterfall to Agile.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "How do you coach a team that is new to Agile methodologies and resistant to change?"
• "Explain how you balance strict EPMO governance requirements with the need for Agile flexibility."
• "What metrics do you rely on most to determine if a sprint was successful?"

`

`

As a Project Manager at Voya Financial, your day-to-day responsibilities will revolve around driving execution and maintaining alignment across the enterprise. You will start your days reviewing project dashboards, checking in on critical path items, and ensuring that any immediate blockers are being addressed. A significant portion of your time will be spent leading cross-functional meetings, from daily engineering stand-ups to weekly steering committee reviews with senior executives.

You will act as the primary bridge between the business units and the technology teams. When a new financial product is conceptualized, you will be responsible for translating that business vision into a structured project plan, defining clear milestones, and securing the necessary resources. You will meticulously track budgets, manage vendor relationships, and ensure that every phase of the project adheres to our strict internal compliance and security standards.

Furthermore, you will play a key role in continuous improvement within the EPMO. This involves conducting thorough post-mortem reviews, documenting lessons learned, and refining our project delivery frameworks. Whether you are an EPMO Intern helping to standardize reporting templates or a VP Project Manager orchestrating a multi-million-dollar digital transformation, your core responsibility is to bring clarity, structure, and momentum to complex enterprise initiatives.