M&A Integration Project Manager Lead

About the role

Responsible for leading complex merger and acquisition integration efforts across Alliant. Coordinates the structured transition of acquired agencies or business units into Alliant's operating model, systems, services, processes, and business practices. Partners with corporate, business, and functional stakeholders to plan, govern, execute, and stabilize integrations while supporting alignment across business operations, finance, HR, legal, compliance, IT, facilities, communications, vendors, and acquired organization teams.

Responsibilities

• Leads complex and concurrent M&A integration projects from planning through stabilization, ensuring integration activities are organized, visible, and aligned with business objectives.
• Develops and maintains integration plans, milestones, dependencies, workstream deliverables, risks, issues, decisions, and readiness tracking.
• Coordinates cross-functional integration workstreams, including business operations, finance, HR, legal, compliance, IT, facilities, communications, vendors, and acquired agency stakeholders.
• Partners with corporate development, business leaders, and functional teams to translate acquisition objectives into actionable integration plans.
• Facilitates integration meetings, governance reviews, status discussions, stakeholder updates, and decision-making forums.
• Prepares executive-ready updates, dashboards, summaries, and escalation materials that communicate integration progress, risks, issues, and recommended actions.
• Identifies, tracks, and escalates risks, issues, dependencies, and decision points that may affect integration timelines, business readiness, service delivery, or stakeholder experience.
• Supports due diligence transition planning by helping identify operational impacts, functional requirements, integration assumptions, and post-close priorities.
• Coordinates operational readiness activities to support Day 1 preparedness, employee and stakeholder communications, process alignment, system transition planning, and business continuity.
• Works with functional leaders and subject matter experts to support integration of policies, processes, tools, reporting, service models, and business practices.
• Supports vendor coordination, third-party dependencies, documentation requests, and integration-related deliverables as needed.
• Drives consistent communication across project teams, acquired business stakeholders, leadership, and corporate partners to support transparency and alignment.
• Contributes to integration playbooks, templates, checklists, lessons learned, reporting practices, and continuous improvement of the M&A integration process.
• Provides guidance, coaching, and informal mentorship to project managers, coordinators, and workstream participants supporting integration activities.
• Supports post-close stabilization by monitoring open items, confirming operational handoffs, tracking transition activities, and ensuring unresolved issues are routed appropriately.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, Information Technology, Computer Science, Project Management, or a related field; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Seven (7) or more years of project, program, business integration, corporate integration, M&A integration, operations, or related experience.
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives involving business operations, systems, processes, vendors, stakeholders, and executive reporting.
• Experience developing and managing project plans, workstream trackers, status reports, risk and issue logs, and integration communications.
• Experience working in a corporate, shared services, insurance, brokerage, financial services, professional services, or acquisition-oriented environment.
• Experience supporting mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, business integrations, system migrations, office transitions, or enterprise operational change.
• Experience improving integration playbooks, templates, governance routines, reporting standards, or project delivery practices.
• Experience supporting due diligence transition planning, Day 1 readiness, post-close stabilization, or acquired business onboarding.
• Experience working with senior leaders, business owners, functional department leads, vendors, and cross-functional project teams.
• PMP, Agile, Scrum, ITIL, Prosci, or equivalent certification.

Skills

• Strong knowledge of project management, collaboration, reporting, and documentation tools such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Smartsheet, or similar platforms.
• Knowledge of M&A integration planning, business transition activities, operational readiness, stakeholder coordination, and post-close stabilization.
• Practical understanding of change management, business process alignment, communications planning, and operational handoff.
• Strong judgment in identifying integration risks, framing escalations, and presenting decision-ready information to leaders.
• Strong project and program leadership skills with experience managing complex, cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong executive communication, written communication, facilitation, meeting leadership, and status reporting skills.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage competing priorities, changing timelines, and multiple workstreams.
• Ability to develop project plans, timelines, dashboards, issue logs, risk registers, dependency trackers, decision logs, and readiness materials.
• Ability to influence without direct authority and build alignment across matrixed teams and stakeholder groups.
• Ability to coordinate work across business operations, finance, HR, legal, compliance, IT, facilities, communications, vendors, and acquired business stakeholders.

Benefits

We are proud to provide comprehensive, high quality employee programs to meet employees' needs now and in the future, including a very competitive financial package.