IT Project Manager

Contract: 12+ months starting August 31, 2026. Hybrid with potential for mainly or fully remote arrangement; occasional onsite work expected for candidates near Madison, WI or Cedar Rapids, IA. Wisconsin and Iowa residents only.

About the role

Our client is seeking an experienced Senior IT Project Manager to lead an in-flight, large-scale enterprise software upgrade. The project is moving through testing, training, go-live, and hypercare, followed by a technical-debt reduction phase in 2027. This is a commercial vendor-built software initiative managed through a structured waterfall SDLC, not a custom software-development project. The selected project manager will coordinate internal technology teams, business stakeholders, vendors, systems integrators, consulting partners, and organizational change-management resources.

Responsibilities

• Assume ownership of an active enterprise software-upgrade project.
• Develop and maintain the integrated project schedule, dependencies, critical path, milestones, baselines, forecasts, and resource constraints.
• Drive testing, training, cutover, go-live, hypercare, and project closeout activities.
• Coordinate work across IT, customer operations, business teams, vendors, and consulting partners.
• Hold project teams and third parties accountable for commitments and delivery outcomes.
• Identify and manage risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and escalations.
• Manage scope through formal waterfall and stage-gate governance.
• Present project status, risks, options, and recommendations to executive stakeholders.
• Support a subsequent phase focused on reducing configurations, customizations, and technical debt.
• Protect continuity of customer billing and customer-service operations throughout the transition.

Requirements

• At least five years of IT or technology project-management experience; 10+ years strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated success delivering large, high-dollar, multi-year software-package implementations, upgrades, or conversions.
• Strong waterfall SDLC and formal project-governance experience.
• Direct experience managing third-party vendors, systems integrators, consultants, and contract resources.
• Advanced project scheduling and critical-path management skills.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Project.
• Strong risk, issue, dependency, escalation, and scope-management experience.
• Ability to work independently and communicate complex technical and business information to senior leadership.
• Prior ownership of projects from initiation through implementation, go-live, stabilization, and closeout.

Preferred qualifications

• Utility, energy, or customer-billing-system project experience.
• Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing or similar CIS platform experience.
• Experience leading cutover, hypercare, and technical-debt reduction.
• Technical experience beyond project management.
• Wisconsin or Iowa residency and occasional onsite availability.