Senior Project Manager

LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY • Washington, DC

4d • $76,000 - $114,000 • Remote

About The Position

The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) is seeking a Senior Project Manager to coordinate the successful delivery of geospatial, data, AI, and environmental projects for public, private, nonprofit, and philanthropic partners. Reporting to the Associate Director of Solutions, the Senior Project Manager will translate contracts and scopes of work into practical plans, track schedules and budgets, coordinate technical teams, manage client communications, and help identify and resolve risks before they affect delivery. The role will lead project planning, financial and contractual management, client engagement, risk management, and coordination of cross-functional technical teams, often across multiple organizations, disciplines, and workstreams. The Senior Project Manager will exercise substantial independent judgment to manage complex project scope, schedules, budgets, resources, dependencies, and client expectations and will be responsible to anticipate and resolve complex client delivery challenges before they affect project outcomes. The position will regularly work with senior client stakeholders, technical leads, organizational leadership, subcontractors, and external partners. In addition to managing assigned projects, the Senior Project Manager will help strengthen CGS's organization-wide project delivery practices by mentoring staff, developing tools and standards, identifying systemic delivery risks, and improving how CGS manages increasingly larger and more complex client engagements.

Requirements

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent professional experience in project management, business, public administration, environmental science, geography, technology, or related field.
• 7 or more years of progressively responsible experience managing complex consulting, professional-services, technology, research, environmental, or other client-facing projects, including significant responsibility for project financial performance and client relationships.
• Demonstrated experience running large, complex, or multidisciplinary projects involving multiple workstreams, stakeholders, technical disciplines, or partner organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to manage scopes, schedules, budgets, deliverables, dependencies, risks, and cross-functional teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to nurture relationships and facilitate meetings and communicate clearly with clients and technical staff.
• 5 or more years of experience managing geospatial, remote sensing, data science, AI, software, or environmental projects.
• 3 or more years of experience managing large government or federally funded engagements, including prime contracts, subcontracts, grants, cooperative agreements, or subawards.
• Strong understanding of professional-services project economics, including labor planning, burn rates, estimates to complete, budget-to-actual analysis, and the financial implications of scope and staffing decisions.
• Ability to translate technical and contractual information into practical project plans.
• Demonstrated ability with project management platforms, such as Monday.com, to deliver complex projects.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-moving, fully remote environment with multiple concurrent priorities.
• Passion for collaborative, inclusive, and client-centered project delivery.

Nice To Haves

• PMP, Agile, Scrum, or comparable project management training or certification.
• Experience managing federally funded contracts, grants, or subawards.
• Experience with resource planning, utilization, earned value, or project financial management.
• Familiarity with cloud environments, data platforms, or AI development processes.
• Domain expertise in water modeling, remote sensing, and geospatial data analysis
• Proficiency with geospatial/geostatistical software (ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, QGIS)
• Programming and automation tools experience a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead multiple complex geospatial, data, AI, software, or environmental projects from contract execution and kickoff through delivery, acceptance, and closeout.
• Develop and own integrated project-management plans translating contracts, technical approaches, and scopes of work into schedules, workstreams, milestones, deliverables, dependencies, resource plans, decision points, and acceptance criteria.
• Lead delivery across multidisciplinary teams that may include geospatial analysts, data scientists, software engineers, environmental scientists, product specialists, subcontractors, and external partners.
• Exercise independent judgment to resolve project-level issues involving priorities, staffing, sequencing, technical dependencies, client expectations, and competing contractual requirements.
• Maintain project plans, meeting notes, decision logs, action registers, and team coordination using Monday.com or comparable tools.
• Coordinate staffing and work-sequencing with technical staff and organizational managers.
• Track deliverable status and ensure reviews, approvals, and client submissions occur on time.
• Serve as a primary day-to-day lead and trusted advisor for assigned clients and partners, including senior government, nonprofit, philanthropic, and private-sector stakeholders.
• Lead client meetings, executive-level project updates, planning sessions, reviews, and difficult conversations concerning scope, schedule, performance, risk, or changing priorities.
• Set and manage expectations regarding scope, schedule, roles, dependencies, data needs, and technical constraints.
• Build trusted client relationships and identify concerns or opportunities that should be elevated to others.
• Identify follow-on opportunities, changing client needs, and potential extensions of work and communicate them to the appropriate parties.
• Represent CGS professionally in multi-organization project teams, steering groups, and other external forums.
• Own project-level financial management for assigned engagements, including budgets, burn rates, labor plans, subcontractor costs, forecasts, invoicing inputs, and estimates to complete.
• Identify scope changes, delivery risks, resource constraints, and unresolved decisions early and handle timely mitigation.
• Lead change-management processes when client requirements or project assumptions change, including documenting impacts and supporting amendments, modifications, or revised scopes.
• Support management of federally funded contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, and subawards, including coordination of applicable reporting and compliance requirements.
• Maintain clear documentation to support financial oversight, contractual accountability, audits, and organizational decision-making.
• Coach and mentor project managers, technical leads, and other staff in project planning, client management, financial management, risk identification, and delivery practices.
• Create and maintain clear operating rhythms for project teams, including planning sessions, standups, reviews, retrospectives, risk reviews, and executive status reporting, without relying on direct supervisory authority, to establish clarity around project responsibilities, priorities, deadlines, and decision-making.
• Promote consistent use of CGS project-management practices while adapting the level of process to the needs of each project.
• Analyze lessons across projects and recommend changes that improve delivery predictability, financial performance, client experience, and organizational scalability.

Benefits

• 3x employer contribution towards retirement matching your employee contribution up to 15%
• health insurance with no deductible
• dental insurance
• vision insurance
• copay assistance through an employer-funded health reimbursement account
• short-term disability coverage
• long term disability coverage
• paid parental leave
• voluntary insurances such as accident insurance
• health care flexible spending
• dependent care flexible spending
• paid time off for holidays, vacation, personal, sick, bereavement, and jury duty
• office closure between December 24 Jan 1 each calendar year
• flexible schedule and option for a compressed 4 day workweek
• tuition and staff development reimbursement
• pet insurance
• Employee Assistance Program

What This Job Offers

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