Senior Project Manager (Contracted Position)

The Senior Project Manageris a contracted technology delivery leader responsible for guiding enterprise-wide software implementation and business transformation projects for NESL. This Senior Project Manager will establish and manage the project plan, governance, budget, risks, decisions, and stakeholder communications needed to deliver a successful implementation within an initial one-year contract term.

Contract Term:This is an initial one-year contract position with the possibility of extension based on NESL business needs and project requirements.

This role serves as the primary liaison among NESL business leaders, IT, internal departments, and software vendors. This Senior Project Manager will bring structure and accountability to enterprise software implementation projects while ensuring that business processes, integrations, data conversion, testing, training, and go-live readiness are coordinated and completed. This Senior Project Manager may support a portfolio of NESL technology and business projects on an as-needed basis.

Location and Schedule:This one-year contract position is assigned to the NESL Corporate office located in New Enterprise, PA. This Senior Project Manager is a collaborative, customer-facing contributor who will spend 2 days per week in the office with other team members. Travel to plants, work sites, or other area offices to learn and understand business objectives and processes or provide implementation and go-live support will be required from time to time. Travel may involve overnight stays, including multiple days.

Senior Project Manager (Contracted Position)- What Will You Do?

Project Leadership and Governance

• Lead the end-to-end implementation of enterprise software solutions through planning, design, configuration, testing, training, go-live, and stabilization.

• Create and maintain the integrated project plan, milestones, dependencies, resource plan, budget tracking, and implementation schedule.

• Establish project governance, including executive steering meetings, working-team cadence, status reporting, decision logs, risk and issue management, and change control.

• Provide clear, timely communication to executive sponsors, business leaders, project team members, and vendor partners regarding progress, decisions, risks, and required actions.

• Identify delivery risks and obstacles early, develop mitigation plans, and escalate issues requiring leadership decisions.

Vendor and Implementation Management

• Serve as NESL's day-to-day project lead and primary point of coordination with the software vendor and other third-party implementation partners.

• Manage vendor deliverables, implementation commitments, project assumptions, scope changes, and action items to ensure work remains aligned to the approved plan.

• Facilitate vendor workshops and working sessions for requirements validation, solution design, configuration decisions, integrations, data conversion, testing, and readiness activities.

• Hold vendor partners accountable for agreed milestones, quality standards, issue resolution, and timely communication.

• Review vendor project artifacts and recommendations with NESL stakeholders to confirm business needs, implementation readiness, and organizational alignment.

Business Readiness and Delivery

• Partner with internal departments, IT, and frontline leaders to define future-state business processes, roles, policies, and reporting needs.

• Coordinate requirements, data conversion, integration, security, testing, training, communications, cutover, and post-go-live support activities across business and technical teams.

• Ensure appropriate business subject matter experts are engaged, prepared, and accountable for timely decisions, reviews, testing, and training.

• Develop and manage go-live readiness criteria, cutover plans, contingency plans, and hypercare support activities.

• Document and share project decisions, lessons learned, process changes, and implementation artifacts for transition to ongoing support.

Requirements - Who Are We Looking For?

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Information Technology, Project Management, Human Resources, or related field. Equivalent experience may be considered in lieu of degree.

• Seven (7) or more years of project management experience leading enterprise software implementations with cross-functional business and technical teams.

• Demonstrated experience working directly with software vendors and implementation partners to manage scope, schedule, deliverables, risks, and issue resolution.

• Experience leading a complex enterprise software implementation is preferred but not required.

• Demonstrated experience managing project plans, budgets, dependencies, governance forums, executive reporting, and change control.

• Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to lead meetings with executives, business leaders, technical teams, and vendors.

• Experience coordinating business process design, data conversion, integrations, User Acceptance Testing, training, cutover, and go-live stabilization.

• Working knowledge of enterprise data conversion and integration workstreams, including the ability to coordinate technical resources and understand business impacts; hands-on development experience is not required.

• Proficiency with project management tools and standard Microsoft Office applications. Experience with Jira, Smartsheet, or similar tools preferred.

• PMP, PMI-ACP, or other recognized project management certification preferred.