Senior IT Project Manager

Harvard University • Cambridge, MA

4h • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Project Manager leads project execution and supports business operations for a defined subset of Technology Partner Services, including Platform Services. This role ensures that services and initiatives within this portfolio are well-managed and operationally disciplined. The Senior PM partners closely with the Associate Director of Operational Excellence, service owners, and senior leaders to translate priorities into executable plans, track delivery, manage risk, and improve operational consistency. This role is primarily execution-focused, providing structure, coordination, and operational rigor that enables senior leaders to focus on strategy and service ownership.

Requirements

• Minimum of seven years’ post-secondary education or relevant work experience
• 10+ years of progressive IT leadership experience, including service management, operations, or program/portfolio management.
• Minimum 5 years at a senior management or director level with demonstrated responsibility for large-scale service portfolios.
• Proven ability to manage budgets, resources, and operational performance across multiple service domains.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL or equivalent service management frameworks.
• Experience developing and reporting on service performance metrics and executive dashboards.
• Demonstrated ability to drive operational excellence and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Exceptional communication, stakeholder engagement, and leadership skills with the ability to influence across diverse groups.
• Bachelor's degree, Business Administration, or related field (or equivalent work experience).

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree in a relevant field preferred.
• Experience in higher education IT environments strongly preferred.
• Completion of Harvard IT Academy Project Management Foundations course (or external equivalent) preferred
• PMP or other relevant certification and experience preferred, e.g., Scrum Master

Responsibilities

• Manage a portfolio of initiatives and maintain visibility into project status and milestones, dependencies and risks, and resource and capacity constraints.
• Support governance processes by preparing status reporting, tracking decisions and follow-ups, and escalating risks and issues appropriately.
• Help ensure initiatives deliver against agreed scope, timeline, and outcomes.
• Support consistent operational practices across the assigned portfolio.
• Assist in developing, maintaining, and operationalizing standard operating processes, project and initiative playbooks, and documentation and reporting standards.
• Participate in post-incident and retrospective reviews as appropriate, helping track follow-up actions and improvements.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, clarity, and coordination.
• Serve as a coordination point between service owners, architects, project teams, and central partners.
• Support preparation of materials for leadership, governance forums, and stakeholder updates.
• Help ensure information flows clearly and consistently across teams.
• Build effective working relationships with peers across Infrastructure and HUIT.
• Support Associate Director in maintaining well-managed business operations for the assigned portfolio, including budget planning and tracking, and cost transparency and reporting.
• Partner with AD, service owners, and finance teams to ensure analysis and clear documentation of assumptions and tradeoffs.
• Prepare operational and financial materials for leadership review.
• Responsible contract and Vendor Management, including but not limited to tracking renewals dates and analyzing contracts.
• Serve as an escalation point for service risks and user-impacting incidents.
• Responsible for defined roadmap and strategy to meet expectations for availability, performance, security, compliance, and usability.
• Responsible to define and maintain clear service definitions including scope, ownership, dependencies, and escalation paths.
• Establish and monitor service performance and risk indicators.
• Use service data to drive prioritization, surface risk, and communicate transparently with leadership and stakeholders.
• Ensure services remain reliable during periods of vendor-driven, compliance-driven, and institutionally required change.
• Manage and balance both discretionary (project) and operations (including tickets) workloads.
• Responsible to define and maintain clear security, compliance, and risk management practices.
• Partner closely with appropriate teams to implement user protections and infrastructure controls, align services with identity lifecycle and security strategies, and ensure compliance controls are operationally feasible, auditable, and clearly communicated.
• Surface and manage tradeoffs between usability, security, and compliance.
• Responsible to define and maintain vendor relationships, including providing key input to contract renewals, negotiations, and third-party support evaluations with HUIT VMO.
• Contributing to complex pricing, licensing, and storage models in partnership with finance and procurement.
• Contributing to cost recovery operations to ensure financial stability.
• Ensure services operate sustainably within institutional budgetary constraints.
• Responsible for all appropriate service changes, including leading user-visible change for the service, balancing innovation with stability.
• Ensuring major changes are well-coordinated, clearly communicated to users and schools, and implemented with appropriate support and documentation.
• Reducing friction between central services and distributed IT organizations.
• Responsible for team health and efficacy, including actively managing performance, addressing issues early, and supporting professional growth.
• Building leadership and resilience in a dependency-heavy service environment.
• Developing and improving business processes to optimize team efficiencies.
• Demonstrating a collaborative, positive, empathetic, and growth mindset.
• Partner closely with appropriate teams including, but not limited to: Information Security and Data Privacy (ISDP) teams, Identity & Access Management for identity, provisioning, and access governance, Platform Services for hosting, automation, and operational dependencies, and Schools and distributed IT leaders across a federated environment.

Benefits

• Generous paid time off including parental leave
• Medical, dental, and vision health insurance coverage starting on day one
• Retirement plans with university contributions
• Wellbeing and mental health resources
• Support for families and caregivers
• Professional development opportunities including tuition assistance and reimbursement
• Commuter benefits, discounts and campus perks

What This Job Offers

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