Program Manager – Electronic Licensing Modernization (ELMo)

1 Alpha Consulting • Baltimore, MD

13d • $100,000 - $12,500 • Onsite

About The Position

The Program Manager will support the Maryland Department of Labor’s Electronic Licensing Modernization (ELMo) project, a major IT modernization initiative transforming occupational and professional licensing systems under a new product-centric model. .This role serves as the single point of contact for day-to-day project operations and is accountable for ensuring that the solutions deliver and sustains long-term value beyond the contract term.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Data Science, Business/Public Administration, Design, or a related discipline.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from PMI.
• 10+ years of experience in project management.
• 8+ years of managing complex IT development projects similar in scale and complexity to the described statement of work.
• Leadership role on at least three successful projects that include organizational change management components and cross-organizational stakeholder groups.
• 5+ years using PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) methodologies and artifacts.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrated experience delivering major IT modernization or product-centric transformation projects in public-sector environments.
• Strong communication and leadership skills, with the ability to influence and build consensus among agencies, vendors, and internal teams.
• Proven ability to foster an agile, iterative, and user-centric culture while maintaining accountability for outcomes.
• Experience presenting to executive stakeholders and governance bodies, including clear communication of values, risk, and trade-offs.
• Prior experience with occupations/professional licensing, regulator, or case management systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead overall project governance and serve as the primary day-to-day contact for the state regarding IT project operations.
• Oversee and direct all resources provided under the contract, ensuring alignment with state goals, timelines, and quality expectations.
• Develop and maintain agile/iterative project plans aligned with the product roadmap, including scope, schedule, and budget.
• Organize and lead project status meetings and work sessions, and prepare and distribute clear progress reports for executive and stakeholder audiences.
• Identify, manage, and mitigate project risk and issues, escalating and implementing course corrections as needed.
• Create and maintain product artifacts and prioritize feature delivery based on business value and user impact.
• Manage project content including policy documentation, business requirements, technical artifacts, and code repositories.
• Develop and sustain a user research pipeline, create research plans, and translate findings into service maps and ongoing product roadmap updates.
• Build, manage, and refine a prioritized product backlog in the form of user stories, with clear acceptance criteria and sequencing.
• Support agency and project leadership with stakeholder engagement, communications, and feedback collection, analysis, and reporting.
• Foster an agile, iterative culture while holding teams accountable to spring commitments and delivery of working software.
• Use agile diagnostics (e.g., burndown charts, user feedback trends) to detect issues early and guide corrective actions.
• Facilitate core agile ceremonies including daily standups, inceptions, spring planning, reviews/demos, and retrospectives.
• Serve as Scrum Master, proactively identifying and removing blockers related to systems, policies, and staffing.
• Mentor and develop team members to ensure full engagement and meaningful contributions in agile ceremonies and delivery activities.
• Establish a sustainable work pace and collaborative, transparent team environment.
• Monitor schedule, budget compliance, and deliverable quality, ensuring alignment with State standards and contract requirements.
• Lead planning and delivery of working software using agile, iterative methods, including direction and documentation for system design, security, performance, accessibility, and scalability.
• Support acquisition and procurement processes, including defining and reviewing statements of work and vendor deliverables.
• Initiate, create, and deliver presentations to project stakeholders to manage expectations, demonstrate value, foster cross-agency collaboration, and secure or sustain funding.
• Ensure adoption of modern engineering practices such as DevOps, CI/CD, test-driven development, and observability.
• Coach and mentor agency staff, vendors, and peers in modern engineering and agile practices to strengthen long-term internal capabilities.
• Communicate technical decisions, risks, and trade-offs clearly and persuasively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• These responsibilities are not meant to be all-inclusive; additional tasks may be assigned.

Benefits

• A supportive, collaborative work environment.
• Professional development and growth opportunities
• Meaningful work that drives positive results for organizations, clients, and communities in fields ranging from technology and management consulting to outreach, engineering, and operations.
• A mission-driven culture built on service, trust, innovation, and measurable impact- regardless of the type of project or client.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager