Project Manager II, WGU Labs, Salt Lake City, UT

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career. Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

This role will work in WGU Labs, an affiliate of WGU. As the research and development (R&D) arm of WGU, Labs focuses on rapidly prototyping, testing, building, and sharing knowledge that will support student outcomes within WGU and across the broader field of Higher Ed. Learn more about our work here.

Responsibilities

• Manage project ambiguity and ever-changing direction.
• Work in R&D or start-up environments fueled by innovation (a plus).
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including internal WGU stakeholders, client/vendor management, and external pilot partners.
• Focus on lean process improvement, innovating, improving processes, documenting lessons learned, and influencing iteration throughout the project team.
• Maintain a thorough and detailed understanding of all department projects, their purpose, and status, ensuring projects meet outlined processes.
• Monitor, report on, and make visible project status, issues, resource requirements, dependencies, and project plans.
• Keep stakeholders and departmental leadership informed of project statuses, including milestone achievements, toll gate progress, risks, and any issues that may adversely affect project schedules.
• Document project deliverables, outputs, and notes capturing why key project decisions were made, and keep project management records and systems accurate and up to date.
• Understand departmental strategic priorities and influence the actions and work efforts of team members in line with those priorities.
• Work closely with the product team, content creators, and other department stakeholders to align priorities and progress on all projects.
• Manage traffic of incoming new requests—validate that appropriate requirements are included.
• Produce timely and accurate reports as directed, including a regular weekly progress report of project tasks completed, priorities for the upcoming week, and dependencies.
• Provide input to develop or refine project management procedures and processes to improve efficiency.
• Develop realistic project plans and schedules by analyzing organizational process assets, enterprise environmental factors, task dependencies, resource requirements, work breakdown, and departmental strategy and priorities.
• Ensure projects meet organizational standards and are managed in accordance with applicable policies, processes, and procedures.
• Monitor change management strategies and outcomes of those strategies.
• Conduct retrospective work on closed/completed projects to document lessons learned and prepare retrospective documentation.
• Conduct data analysis and research course and program-level information as requested during the analysis phases of other projects.
• Track project costs to meet budget.
• Facilitate change requests to ensure all parties are informed of impacts on schedule and budget.
• Model and mentor best practices in leveraging AI in daily workflows and AI solutions for continuous improvement.
• Complete and/or contribute to required reporting, such as end-of-grant cycle reporting, end-of-project closeout, documented lessons learned, and annual reports.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution.
• Three (3) years of experience as the assigned project manager with responsibility for driving and leading project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure.
• Project Management Certification (preference toward PMI-PMP but open to considering certifications from other organizations).
• Experience applying change management methodologies and practices.

Qualifications

• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Understanding of Change Management theory/techniques and implementation into a project plan.
• Ability to influence change and motivate others.
• Strong demonstration of stakeholder management; getting work done through others and coordinating and communicating at a variety of levels both upward, outward, and within the project team to ensure ongoing alignment, agreement, and yielding high levels of influence.
• Ability to use project management systems and tools.
• History of successful execution of projects that impact an entire organization.
• Professional integrity that represents the educational standards within higher education.
• Works well in a team environment.
• Solid technical and problem-solving skills.
• Design thinking skills; ability to innovate and intuit new solutions and processes.
• Technically savvy with the ability to learn and navigate a variety of AI-forward applications, including Claude, Asana, Google Workspace, Slack, GitHub, etc.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in EdTech, higher education, or other R&D environments.
• Experience in project forecasting, strategic planning, and risk management.
• Master’s degree from an accredited institution or higher in a relevant field.
• Some combination of desirable certifications include: Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification (preferred), Proci Change Management certification, Six Sigma Certification such as Green or Black Belt.

Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements at the discretion of the hiring manager.

Pay

$75,200.00 - $112,700.00

Schedule

This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours).

Benefits

• Eligible for bonuses.
• Medical, dental, vision, telehealth, and mental healthcare.
• Health savings account and flexible spending account.
• Basic and voluntary life insurance.
• Disability coverage.
• Accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages.
• Legal and identity theft coverage.
• Retirement savings plan.
• Wellbeing program.
• Discounted WGU tuition.
• Flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation (no accrual needed).
• Flexible paid sick time (no accrual needed).
• 11 paid holidays.
• Other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

Travel

This position requires occasional travel of up to 20%, including required attendance at designated company summits, conferences, visits to company locations, and other business-related events as needed. Additional travel may be assigned to support business requirements.