Program Manager

Mitacs

30d

About The Position

Mitacs is seeking a highly experienced Program Manager for a 1-year contract to lead the orchestration and delivery of programs under the Transformation Management Office (TMO) Portfolio, including Mitacs’ Enterprise Transformation (MET). This role reports to the Director, Enterprise Transformation and is accountable for ensuring alignment, integration, and delivery across multiple corporate initiatives. The Program Manager will serve as the central coordination point across programs, enabling effective prioritization, managing cross-program dependencies, reporting on the integrated project plan, and ensuring leadership has clear visibility into progress, risks, issues, and required decisions. This is a hands-on leadership role that requires strong judgment, the ability to navigate ambiguity, and a track record of driving trade-offs and outcomes in complex, multi-stream environments.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in program management within complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
Demonstrated experience coordinating multiple concurrent initiatives or portfolios.
Minimum 5 years of experience directly managing Project Managers or similar roles.
Program Management (PgM) or Project Management Professional (PMP) certification or equivalent.
Certified Scrum Master (CSM), SAFe, Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).
Expertise in project management tools such as Smartsheet, MS Planner, Jira, or other industry-leading platforms.
Experience managing portfolio budgets in excess of $10M.
Experience in managing strategic risks, program and project governance.
Proven ability to lead and coordinate small, cross-functional teams and collaborate across multiple business units and workstreams to achieve transformation goals.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to engage and manage relationships with stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management abilities, including experience presenting to executive steering committee (ESC).
Active user of AI tools for productivity (e.g., Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or similar) with a mindset of continuous improvement and innovation.
Experience managing external consulting partners (e.g., Big 4).

Nice To Haves

Professional certification in Change Management (e.g., Prosci ADKAR).
Proficiency and/or certification in Benefits Realization Management.
Experience in managing large-scale transformation programs within the technology sector or not-for-profit sector.
Expertise in Lean Six Sigma or other process improvement methodologies.
Experience stepping into a function during a period of organizational transition or leadership change.
Familiarity with Power Platform tools (Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps).

Responsibilities

Provide leadership and governance across the TMO portfolio, ensuring enterprise transformation initiatives are aligned with organizational priorities.
Lead the end-to-end delivery of Enterprise Transformation programs, including planning, execution, risks and issues management, dependency management, budget management, stakeholder engagement, and delivery of key program outcomes.
Work closely with sponsors, workstream leads, and cross-functional teams to integrate multiple workstreams, ensuring a coordinated integrated roadmap to achieving program milestones and successful adoption and outcomes.
Manage vendor coordination and governance, including day-to-day management of consulting partner relationships.
Prepare materials for the Executive Steering Committee (ESC) on program delivery.
Ensure that project and program-level risks, issues, dependencies, and opportunities are identified, assessed, and mitigated throughout the program lifecycle.
Provide regular updates in both written reports and verbally to senior leadership, workstream leads, and stakeholders on program progress, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and risks.
Own the development and maintenance of the enterprise transformation roadmap aligned to strategic priorities.
Track and report on KPIs to ensure that program goals are met.
Ensure adherence to program governance frameworks, ensuring consistency and efficiency across the transformation Portfolio.
Serve as the central point of contact for program communication, ensuring transparent, clear, and timely updates across all levels of the organization.
Build and maintain effective working relationships with business units, sponsors, and workstream leads to ensure alignment on program goals, priorities, and outcomes.
Work closely with the Change Management Advisor to integrate change and communication strategies into the integrated program roadmap, ensuring effective messaging that supports organizational buy-in and successful change adoption.
Facilitate cross-functional meetings to maintain alignment on project deliverables and ensure stakeholder alignment on critical priorities throughout the program lifecycle.
Contribute to iterative planning and execution using Agile delivery frameworks (Scrum and SAFe), ensuring dependencies, priorities, and risks are actively managed.
Support consistent application of Agile practices across programs to enable predictable delivery and effective value realization.
Lead, coach, and develop a small project management & delivery team.
Set clear objectives, performance expectations, and development plans for direct reports.
Monitor workload distribution and raise resource risks proactively.
Foster a culture of excellence, collaboration, continuous improvement, and innovation.
Partner with the Change Management Advisor and Organizational Change Management working group to drive adoption of new processes, tools, and ways of working.
Leverage AI tools and automation to drive personal and team productivity across program delivery, reporting, planning, and communication.