Applications Program Lead

At Core States Group, the work you do matters to the clients we serve, the communities we support, and the teams who rely on one another to deliver with excellence. Our mission is to create a world where all environments improve everyday life.

Benefits

• Competitive wages and bonus programs
• 401(k) match to help grow your retirement savings
• Excellent health benefits, life insurance options, and supplemental benefit options
• Generous PTO time for work-life balance
• Team wellness challenges, Costco membership reimbursement, and half-day Fridays during summer months
• Flexible work environment supporting hybrid-remote work
• Four weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Tuition reimbursement to support your learning journey

About the role

The Application Program Lead will be a member of the Digital Transformation team at Core States and report to the Director of that group. This role owns the delivery of the firm’s AI platform program — the connectivity and knowledge layer that makes core business systems (ERP, business intelligence, design tools, and document management) accessible to AI. While strategic direction and architecture are owned by the Director of Digital Transformation, this role owns the program plan and its execution.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the program schedule for the custom AI solution platform initiative: milestones, dependencies, critical path, and sequencing across workstreams
• Coordinate contributors across multiple teams and reporting lines, including Digital Transformation developers, data engineers, Design Technology leads, and business-side subject matter experts
• Surface resource conflicts, blockers, and schedule risks early; drive them to resolution and escalate crisply when coordination stalls
• Run the shared weekly rhythm of goals, status, and results, and produce status reporting that leadership can trust without translation
• Write scope, requirements, and testable success criteria for each connector and platform capability, and confirm delivered work meets them before it is considered done
• Maintain the platform backlog and roadmap, and hold each workstream to the firm’s bar of visible results within 90 days
• Work directly with AI Champions and power users to learn what they are trying to accomplish and where system connectivity is the constraint
• Translate requests to connect additional systems into prioritized platform capabilities, maintaining a visible trail from business request to roadmap to delivered capability and closing the loop with requesters
• Partner with the Director of Digital Transformation on prioritization decisions, and with IT stakeholders on data access and governance questions raised by new connectors
• Other duties as assigned

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, Engineering, or relevant field; or equivalent professional experience
• 4+ years managing technical programs or projects for software, data, or IT initiatives, with direct ownership of the schedule
• Demonstrated track record building and maintaining working program plans — milestones, dependencies, critical path — and keeping them current as conditions change
• Experience coordinating contributors across teams and reporting lines without direct authority
• Experience gathering needs from business users and translating them into a prioritized technical roadmap
• Experience introducing delivery discipline where none previously existed, establishing cadence, reporting, and intake (preferred)
• Experience in system integration, data platform, or API-focused programs (preferred)
• Experience in the AEC industry or another project-based professional services business (preferred)
• Sufficient technical literacy to run an integration program credibly: able to follow discussions of APIs, authentication, and data access, ask useful questions, and assess whether an estimate is plausible, without owning technical design
• Hands-on fluency with modern AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, or similar)
• Proficiency with project planning and backlog tooling (Azure DevOps or comparable)
• Working knowledge of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem for documentation, reporting, and status communication
• Familiarity with enterprise business systems commonly integrated in a professional services firm (ERP, business intelligence, document management) (preferred)
• Formal project management training (PMP, agile certifications) useful but not required; demonstrated schedule ownership matters more than credentials

Schedule

This position is currently hybrid-remote in the Philadelphia region, with occasional in-person meetings or team-building activities at our King of Prussia or Philadelphia offices.