Senior Project Manager, IT

Senior Project Manager, IT
American Public Education, Inc.

APEI seeks a Senior Project Manager (SPM) with strong project management, technical, business, and personal leadership skills to lead multiple initiatives and programs across the enterprise. The candidate should have strong analytical and facilitation skills and the ability to interpret and anticipate customer needs to develop clear and attainable goals, objectives, and execution plans. The SPM is a project leader, business partner, and mentor responsible for scope, time, finances, quality, and overall performance management.

Responsibilities: 

• Lead others through business change and implementation plans. Drives teams to consensus and completion.
• Interprets business needs and defines realistic goals and objectives.
• Scopes projects to align with goals and objectives and deliver incremental value.
• Holds individuals accountable for project deliverables.
• Proactively anticipate and manage risk.
• Determines the most appropriate project lifecycle to follow based on project factors.
• Manages scope, schedule, budget, quality, risk, and overall performance.
• Adheres to all APEI project management and IT standards.
• Evaluate and manage third-party contracts and resources to improve project performance.
• Identifies, coordinates, and manages internal and external stakeholders.
• Effectively communicates and collaborates with all levels of stakeholders.
• Builds, leads, and motivates project teams. Facilitates project team meetings and workshops to solve problems, resolve issues, and achieve successful outcomes. Keeps project team on task to meet project deadlines.
• Anticipates project challenges and risk scenarios and prepares, leads, and executes proactive response strategies to ensure optimal results.
• Focuses on quality and value in all project activities.
• Ensure compliance with project quality standards, procedures, and guidelines.
• Handles multiple initiatives simultaneously.
• Mentors project managers in project management best practices and adherence to APEI standards.
• Contributes to project management standards.

Required Skills: 

• Exhibits superior analytical, evaluative, and problem-solving abilities.
• Develops others through encouragement and knowledge transfer.
• Provides exceptional service orientation.
• Identifies problems, determines information's accuracy and relevancy, and applies sound judgment to generate and evaluate alternatives and make recommendations.
• Delivers excellent verbal and written communication, including expressing facts and ideas, interpreting information, and making a clear and convincing presentation. Able to articulate ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Displays strong project management and leadership skills.
• Develop actionable, realistic work plans.
• Possesses strong facilitation skills.
• Performs work independently as well as a team leader and team contributor.
• Set and manage priorities judiciously.
• Maintains strong self-motivation and team motivation through high degrees of collaboration

Requirements/Education: 

• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is a plus.
• 8+ years’ experience managing IT projects, with a majority of experience operating budgets exceeding $1M and spanning multiple business functions and development teams. Prefer experience managing projects within Higher Education.
• Microsoft Office Products, especially SharePoint, Project, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Visio.
• Experience with Agile/Scrum development methodology and more formalized waterfall-style Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
• Knowledge of IT Project and Program Management best practices.
• Experience supporting enterprise-level projects.
• Detailed knowledge of project accounting
• University degree (Bachelors) in Project Management, Computer Science, Business Administration, or related field. An advanced degree in one of these fields is a plus.

About Us:

Online, on campus and in the workplace, we provide higher education and training to our country’s heroes – military service members, veterans, nurses, government employees, and motivated professionals that want to make a difference. American Public Education, Inc. educates service-minded students, ranging from the military, public service, federal agencies, and nursing communities, through American Public University System (APUS), Hondros College of Nursing (HCON), Rasmussen University and Graduate School USA (GSUSA).

It is the policy of American Public Education, Inc. (APEI