Project Manager - Higher Education
About The Position
The Senior Project Manager will lead large-scale organizational and technology transformation initiatives in a higher education environment, with a strong emphasis on community college districts. The role drives end-to-end execution across departments and stakeholder groups, establishing project governance, creating integrated implementation roadmaps, managing risks and dependencies, and supporting organizational readiness for change. Direct experience with community college districts is essential; ERP modernization or implementation experience is highly desirable but not required. The position is hybrid in Sacramento, California, with an expectation of working onsite one to two days per week. Additional onsite attendance may be required during key project phases, including workshops, go-live readiness, and executive steering meetings.
Requirements
- 10+ years managing large-scale projects in transformation, modernization, business process improvement, or enterprise initiatives.
- 7+ years leading complex initiatives across multiple departments, functions, or entities.
- 5+ years building or managing project roadmaps, integrated plans, governance structures, and resource plans.
- 5+ years facilitating executive-level stakeholder engagement, decision-making, prioritization, and executive reporting.
- 5+ years overseeing requirements, business process reengineering, organizational change management, procurement, vendor coordination, testing, and readiness activities.
- Demonstrated project management experience in higher education.
- Direct experience working with community college districts on modernization, operational improvement, and/or transformation.
- Strong leadership, facilitation, communication, and cross-functional coordination skills.
Nice To Haves
- ERP implementation, modernization, or replacement project experience in higher education or the public sector.
- Familiarity with Oracle Cloud ERP, Workday, PeopleSoft, or similar platforms.
- Experience spanning Finance, HR/HCM, SIS, and higher-education administrative functions.
- Experience supporting ERP planning, RFP development, solution selection, system integrator selection, and implementation preparation.
- Experience in California higher education or similarly complex public sector organizations.
- Experience developing business cases, cost models, staffing plans, budgets, and forecasts.
- PMP, PgMP, Prosci, SAFe, or similar certification.
Responsibilities
- Lead planning, coordination, and execution of enterprise organizational, process, and technology transformation initiatives.
- Develop project roadmaps, implementation strategies, schedules, milestones, and resource plans.
- Establish governance structures, including decision-making forums, roles, responsibilities, and accountability models.
- Manage project scope, timelines, budgets, risks, issues, dependencies, and deliverables.
- Align project objectives with institutional priorities, operational needs, and long-term strategy.
- Partner with executive leadership, academic administrators, and cross-functional teams to drive alignment and outcomes.
- Coordinate activities across Finance, HR, Student Services, IT, and other departments.
- Facilitate executive steering committees, stakeholder workshops, and working sessions to resolve issues and drive decisions.
- Navigate complex governance structures and decentralized stakeholder environments while supporting sustained business ownership, participation, and accountability.
- Build and maintain integrated project plans covering process improvement, requirements, data readiness, organizational change management, procurement, testing, and go-live preparation.
- Coordinate multiple workstreams across business, functional, and technical teams.
- Assess organizational capacity, resource needs, readiness, and dependencies.
- Identify delivery risks proactively and implement mitigation strategies.
- Provide executive-level reporting, performance measures, and status communications.
- Support modernization efforts involving business process redesign, operational improvements, and technology enablement.
- Partner with Organizational Change Management teams on communications, training, stakeholder engagement, and readiness planning.
- Coordinate with vendors, consultants, and internal teams on solution evaluation, procurement, and implementation activities.
- Support development of budgets, staffing plans, business cases, and implementation approaches.
- Ensure changes are sustainable and deliver measurable institutional improvements.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
