Sr. Project Manager(ITSM)

This Sr. Project Manager will lead business application and technology-driven initiatives based on the company’s goals and needs. This consultant role requires a minimum of 10 years of experience in IT, project management, and successful project delivery. Key responsibilities include developing project charters and plans, facilitating meetings, tracking project status, managing risks and issues, coordinating with vendors and internal teams, and preparing executive status updates. Additional responsibilities may include creating project deliverables and analyzing business requirements and system design.

The Senior Project Manager must actively structure and drive projects forward while solving problems along the way. They will go beyond schedule tracking by engaging in business analysis, risk management, stakeholder alignment, and vendor coordination.

1.            Project Leadership and Execution.

•             Ensure projects follow industry best practices in project and portfolio management.

•             Manage multiple projects with broad scope, ambiguity, and complexity.

•             Provide structure and direction, ensuring alignment between business objectives and technical solutions.

•             Develop and maintain project schedules, milestones, and deliverables, proactively managing risks, scope, and dependencies.

•             Oversee vendor and in-house project teams, ensuring projects progress within time and budget constraints.

•             Monitor costs, schedules, and project health, providing regular updates to leadership and escalating issues proactively when necessary

2.            Business Analysis and Stakeholder Engagement (as needed).

•             Analyze and refine business and functional requirements to ensure clarity and feasibility – not just document them.

•             Assess process impacts, define success criteria, and support change management efforts by identifying and addressing potential adoption challenges.

•             Ensure smooth communication between technical teams and business stakeholders, bridging gaps between business needs and technical feasibility.

3.            Vendor and Contract Management.

•             Coordinate with vendors to ensure timely delivery of system enhancements, upgrades or implementations.

•             Manage vendor relationships, including contract agreements, software renewals and issue escalation.

4.            Risk and Issue Management.

•             Identify potential risks early and  implement mitigation strategies.

•             Maintain a structured RAID log to track risks, actions, issues and decisions, ensuring visibility and accountability.

•             Navigate established governance structures to manage escalations, change requests and decision making processes.

Required Knowledge and Experience:

•             Recent, hands-on ITSM implementation leadership (within the last ~5 years): including key ITIL processes such as Incident, Problem, and Change Management, as well as Configuration Management Database (CMDB), and Service Catalog/Knowledge Management; rollout readiness and stabilization.

•             Program-level ownership: RFP/SOW/vendor governance, budgeting, cross-project dependencies, and executive reporting (not a task/traffic coordinator).

•             Expertise across people, process, and technology best practices for an ITSM implementation: demonstrated leadership not only of the ITSM technology solution, but also strong partnership with Organizational Change Management (OCM) to identify people and process impacts and apply implementation best practices.

•             Cross-functional coordination experience across IT: Service Desk, Infrastructure Ops, NOC, Architecture/Strategy, Business Apps, and Organizational Change Management.

•             Local/within driving distance to Long Beach (preferred): able to be onsite as needed for workshops, vendor sessions, and leadership touchpoints.

•             Style: collaborative, listens first, clear communicator who can bridge engineers and executives.

•             10+ years of project management experience, with strong background in business applications, system upgrades, and enterprise IT initiatives.

•             Proven ability to manage both business and IT projects from initiation through closure.

 Strong problem solving, analytical and communication skills, with experience creating and presenting executive level communications.

•             Ability to step into a business analyst role as needed, gathering requirements, mapping workflows, and aligning business needs with technical solutions.

•             Experience managing vendor contracts, licensing agreements and external service providers.

•             Strong understanding of project management methodologies, best practices and structured PMO frameworks.

•             Experience leading change management and process improvement initiatives.

•             Strong understanding of SDLC processes, IT governance and risk management.

•             Experience managing both custom and package software solutions, including systems integration.

•             Proficiency with Microsoft Office suite, including Excel, Word, Powerpoint, MS Project, Teams, Visio and Sharepoint.