Project and Partner Management Lead

AirLife•Grand Rapids, MI

11d

About The Position

The Project and Partner Management Lead serves as AirLife IT's internal PMO leader, responsible for bringing rigor, consistency, and accountability to how IT plans, prioritizes, and delivers work. This role partners with IT leadership and business stakeholders to establish and maintain project intake processes, drive ways of working improvements, and ensure IT projects are delivered on time, on scope, and within budget. This is an equal-parts strategist-and-practitioner role: the right candidate actively manages projects while building the systems and habits that allow the broader IT team to work more effectively. This role also coordinates the management of IT's vendor and consulting partner relationships, ensuring external resources operate within AirLife's project framework and service expectations.

Requirements

Demonstrated experience in IT project management offices or PMO functions in a mid-market enterprise environment.
Proficiency with Agile and hybrid project management methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe); hands-on experience implementing Agile for IT enhancement delivery.
Strong working knowledge of project intake and portfolio prioritization frameworks; experience managing a portfolio of concurrent IT projects across multiple functional areas.
Experience designing and operationalizing ways of working improvements, including meeting cadences, status reporting standards, decision-making frameworks, and escalation protocols.
Proficiency with project and portfolio management tools; Smartsheet experience strongly preferred.
Ability to manage external vendor and consulting partner engagements, including SOW review, milestone tracking, and invoice validation.
Strong executive communication and presentation skills; comfortable presenting status, risk, and investment decisions to C-suite and PE sponsor audiences.
Strong understanding of IT governance and change management practices.
Experience in a PE-backed, high-growth manufacturing or medical device environment preferred.
PMP, PMI-ACP, or equivalent project management certification preferred.
7–12 years of progressive IT project management experience, including 3+ years in a PMO leadership or senior program management role.
Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Technology, or related field.

Nice To Haves

Smartsheet experience strongly preferred.
Experience in a PE-backed, high-growth manufacturing or medical device environment preferred.
PMP, PMI-ACP, or equivalent project management certification preferred.
PMP, PMI-ACP, or equivalent certification strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and continuously improve AirLife IT's project intake and prioritization process, ensuring all incoming project requests are captured, evaluated, and prioritized against strategic IT and business objectives before work begins.
Build and maintain the IT project portfolio view, providing IT leadership, the CFO, and Frazier Partners with clear visibility into project status, resource utilization, delivery timelines, and open risks.
Introduce and drive Agile methodology for IT enhancement delivery, coaching team members on agile principles and facilitating sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives where applicable.
Define, implement, and enforce IT ways of working standards across the department, including meeting discipline, agenda and notes practices, status reporting cadences, and decision-making frameworks, consistent with AirLife IT Meeting Standards.
Actively manage one or more concurrent IT projects from initiation through go-live, taking personal ownership of requirements definition, scope control, resource coordination, risk management, and stakeholder communication.
Coordinate AirLife's IT vendor and consulting partner relationships within the project delivery framework; ensure partner SOWs are aligned to project scope, that milestones are tracked, and that delivery accountability is maintained.
Partner with the IT Director of Applications, Director of Infrastructure & Security, and VP of Data, Analytics & AI to align project resources, timelines, and priorities to budgetary constraints and strategic objectives.
Lead and facilitate a quarterly senior leadership portfolio review covering IT project intake volume and trends, current prioritization decisions and rationale, project delivery outcomes and milestone achievement, and open risks; ensure this forum drives timely decisions and that outputs are documented and acted upon.
Build and publish regular project status reports and portfolio dashboards for IT leadership and business stakeholders; escalate risks and issues proactively with recommended mitigation options.
Facilitate post-project retrospectives and capture lessons learned to drive continuous improvement of AirLife's IT delivery model.
Support IT leadership in developing business cases for new IT investments, translating technical scope and resource needs into business value language appropriate for the CFO and PE sponsor review process.
Serve as the IT department's champion for process discipline, accountability, and continuous improvement in how IT commits to and delivers on its project portfolio.
Uphold and embody AirLife's values in all aspects of work.
Demonstrate accuracy and thoroughness in daily work; look for ways to improve and promote quality & safety.
Inspire the trust of others; treat people with respect and dignity and embrace the value of diversity.
Use time efficiently; perform job accurately, thoroughly, and conserve Company resources to improve profits.
Contribute to building and maintaining a positive team environment.
Assure all policies and guidelines are implemented and followed.