Deputy ERP Program Manager

About the role

The Deputy Program Manager serves as a senior leadership partner within the ERP Implementation Program, supporting the Director of the ERP Program Office in driving delivery excellence, governance, and cross-functional coordination across all program workstreams. This is a hands-on program management role requiring deep experience managing complex, multi-workstream IT or ERP initiatives from planning through deployment.

Responsibilities

• Support the Director of the ERP Program Office in all aspects of program oversight, strategic direction, and day-to-day operations
• Serve as the senior point of continuity and decision-making authority across workstreams in the Director’s absence
• Maintain and enforce program governance structures including decision rights, escalation paths, and change control processes
• Facilitate executive steering committee meetings, program governance forums, and cross-functional leadership sessions, including agenda development, briefing materials, and follow-through on action items
• Ensure program activities remain aligned with scope, schedule, budget, and quality baselines; recommend corrective actions when variances arise
• Own and maintain the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), coordinating inputs from technical, functional, and vendor workstreams to produce a single, authoritative view of program progress
• Identify and manage cross-workstream dependencies, ensuring upstream delays or changes are surfaced, assessed, and mitigated before impacting the critical path
• Lead recurring planning cycles including sprint reviews, milestone tracking, and phase-gate readiness assessments
• Cook up with the System Integrator (SI) to align contractor schedules with government program milestones and deliverable acceptance timelines
• Support resource planning across workstreams, flagging capacity constraints and staffing gaps to program leadership
• Maintain the program risk register; lead risk identification, analysis, and mitigation planning with workstream leads and the SI, including development of contingency plans for high-priority threats
• Track open issues to resolution, ensuring owners are accountable and that issues are escalated appropriately before they threaten schedule or delivery quality
• Manage the program change control process, evaluating scope change requests for impact on schedule, cost, and resources, and facilitating approval through the appropriate governance body
• Serve as a primary point of coordination with the System Integrator, tracking contractual deliverables, reviewing work products, and escalating performance concerns
• Build and maintain productive working relationships with functional area leads, agency stakeholders, and program sponsors across the enterprise
• Represent the program office in stakeholder engagements, working group sessions, and cross-agency coordination activities as directed
• Champion user adoption as a program priority, ensuring readiness activities, training timelines, and communications are integrated into the overall program schedule
• Engage directly with functional stakeholders and business process owners to surface resistance, concerns, and readiness gaps, and bring those insights into program decision-making
• Coordinate with the OCM team to ensure change activities are sequenced appropriately alongside technical and functional milestones

Qualifications

• BS/BA and 11+ years of relevant project management experience -OR- MS/MA or higher and 9+ years of relevant project management experience
• Preferred: 10+ years of progressive program or project management experience on large-scale IT or ERP implementations
• Experience with major ERP platforms: SAP and Oracle
• Demonstrated experience managing integrated schedules, cross-workstream dependencies, and decision-making structures on complex, multi-year programs
• Experience in government or public-sector ERP modernization programs
• Familiarity with federal/state acquisition, budget cycles, or compliance environments
• Background or formal training in Organizational Change Management (Prosci/ADKAR, Kotter, or equivalent)
• Experience working alongside or coordinating an OCM team in a program delivery context
• Background in business process reengineering or workforce transition planning
• PMP or equivalent project management certification
• Hands-on experience with risk and issue management, change control, and executive-level reporting
• Experience coordinating with or managing System Integrators (SIs) in a government or enterprise program context
• Strong facilitation and communication skills. Comfortable presenting program status, risks, and recommendations to senior leadership
• Proven ability to work effectively in a matrixed environment, influencing across organizational boundaries without direct authority
• Familiarity with user adoption challenges in enterprise technology implementations and the ability to engage stakeholders through difficult transitions
• Ability to manage competing priorities and maintain focus in a fast-paced, ambiguous program environment