Senior Project Manager

Residency in or relocation to Louisiana is preferred for all positions.

About the Role

This individual contributor position facilitates the coordination of personnel and other resources (e.g., contractors, vendor partners) required to successfully complete a series of individual, complex, and highly visible projects. The Senior Project Manager ensures the delivery of quality business outcomes, including project deliverables, new and improved processes, and services. The role manages projects of high complexity and visibility within a tightly regulated industry environment and is directly responsible for all key steps in project delivery: business, technical, and functional requirements elicitation, dependency mapping, milestone projections, task-level program steps, and the identification and regular publishing of metrics defining project success. The position must regularly monitor work to ensure projects remain in line with projected costs and timelines, adopting well-established industry best-practice frameworks and methodologies. The Senior Project Manager is accountable for complying with all laws and regulations associated with duties and responsibilities.

Key Relationships

• Internal: Interfaces directly with client management (senior management, business owners, and project team members) to negotiate and define requirements. Provides guidance and direction to all areas placing requirements on the system. Manages highly complex cross-divisional projects with cross-department and cross-organization impacts. Frequently interfaces with IT, PMO, and business leaders. Exercises diplomacy and tact in discussions with client management on controversial subjects.
• External: Frequent contact with client management to exchange information and/or make presentations on information systems concepts. Maintains contact with selected user groups and similar organizations. Attends outside technical meetings as directed, making presentations when necessary.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Project Management, Computer Science, or a related field required. Completion of an approved educational program or four years of related experience may be accepted in lieu of a degree.
• Work Experience: Four years of experience in planning and implementing projects, including developing scope, goals, work plans, timelines, implementation strategies, and measurement processes for assessing progress. A minimum of three years must be in senior-level project planning and implementation.

Skills and Abilities

• High degree of competency with PMBOK methodologies and frameworks such as project management, software development life cycle, and ITIL. Six Sigma and Organizational Development best practices are a plus.
• Advanced knowledge and experience in computer science, including hardware and software products, systems analysis, programming, development/maintenance processes, and data management for large, complex systems.
• Strong oral and written communication skills, with the ability to create and deliver presentations to organizational management, including senior leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to manage project teams independently with minimal oversight.
• Presentation and facilitation skills for working with key stakeholders and executive management.
• Experience interpreting and explaining specialized or complex material into information consumable by the public.
• Ability to critically analyze business information and process flows, gather relevant requirements, and generate business, functional, and technical specifications for successful delivery.
• Experience identifying, defining, quantifying, and solving complex or highly technical project-related issues regularly.
• Experience using creative and innovative approaches to resolve issues with minimal lead time and requirement definition for major projects.
• Experience correlating requirements and information from multiple sources, anticipating current and future processing and management information needs, analyzing potential impacts, and creating new technical solutions.

PMI certification preferred.

Responsibilities

• Continuously adhere to project management standards, processes, and procedures to ensure products and services meet client requirements cost-efficiently.
• Mentor junior-level project managers in professional development and skills enhancement.
• Actively pursue personal skills and leadership development opportunities to ensure growth and high-quality productivity.
• Align work and work habits with the organization’s strategic and tactical plans, ensuring responsiveness to the organization’s mission, goals, and objectives.
• Adhere to project and quality-related processes in collaboration with fellow project managers and department management. Demonstrate leadership in evaluating current processes, recommending improvements, and evangelizing new processes.
• Develop, manage, and build strong relationships and partnerships with clients, vendors, peers, other teams, and staff to ensure a high level of understanding of the client’s business operations, IT support needs, and service expectations.
• Effectively manage all areas of projects, including initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing projects.
• Manage multiple large to extra-large initiatives, most of which are complex and cross-functional, with high strategic and operational priority and visibility at the senior management level. Projects may range from six months to three years or more in duration and may involve budgets of $1,000,000 or more.
• Coordinate management of larger, more complex, cross-functional projects with support from junior project management staff.
• Provide regular reporting and visibility on project statuses.
• Define and oversee the business and financial results expected from a project; develop implementation plans, conduct risk assessments, and develop and implement strategy to ensure project integration with existing and competing projects and strategies for both short- and long-term business goals.
• Identify and assemble project teams, identify necessary resources in advance, and assign tasks and timeframes to facilitate successful project completion.
• Manage technical challenges of applications and new product development; identify, communicate, and manage all levels of risk to project business owners and senior management.
• Successfully identify and communicate risks, scope creep, and create actionable risk mitigation plans.
• Understand departmental goals and objectives and deliver work products that contribute to those goals.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met to successfully perform the responsibilities of the job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Job duties are performed in a normal, clean office environment with normal noise levels.
• Work is predominately done while standing or sitting.
• The ability to comprehend, document, calculate, visualize, and analyze is required.
• Perform other job-related duties as assigned within the scope of responsibilities.