Senior Project Manager

Company Description

Sonic Automotive is a fortune 500 company and is one of the largest automotive retailers in the United States.   Sonic Automotive operates in 15 states, is comprised of over 100 dealerships, and represents 29 different brands of automobiles. These dealerships provide numerous services, including sales of new and used cars; sales of replacement parts; vehicle maintenance, warranty, paint, and collision repair services; and arrangement of extended warranty contracts, financing, and insurance for the company's customers.   

Job Description

The Senior Project Manager is a member of the Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) at Sonic Automotive, Inc., a Fortune 500 company and one of the nation’s largest automotive and powersports retailers. In this role, you will deploy project management methodologies and implement governance processes and tools to enable consistent, high quality, execution of EPMO programs and projects across the company’s three business segments.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Lead planning, execution, monitoring, and successful delivery of complex, cross-functional projects.
• Manage all phases of the project lifecycle using EPMO governance standards, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within scope, and at expected quality levels.
• Demonstrate exceptional interpersonal, communication, facilitation, and presentation skills, with the ability to guide stakeholders throughout all organizational levels.
• Organize, facilitate, and lead project governance, planning, status, risk, and executive steering committee meetings.
• Develop and deliver concise, executive-level project communications, dashboards, and status reports that provide clear visibility into project health, milestones, risks, and dependencies.
• Partner closely with executive sponsors, business leaders, product owners, and cross-functional teams to define project objectives, scope, success metrics, and business outcomes.
• Establish and maintain comprehensive project plans, schedules, communication plans, and governance documentation throughout the project lifecycle.
• Proactively identify project risks, issues, assumptions, and dependencies, developing mitigation and contingency plans while escalating critical concerns to leadership when appropriate.
• Facilitate team meetings and working sessions.
• Facilitate resolution of complex project challenges by driving collaboration and alignment among stakeholders.
• Build and sustain strong working relationships across business units, technology teams, vendors, and executive leadership to foster collaboration and successful project delivery.
• Lead cross-functional project teams without direct reporting authority, motivating team members through influence, accountability, and shared ownership of project outcomes.
• Effectively manage multiple, concurrent projects and competing priorities in a fast-paced enterprise environment while maintaining high standards of quality and execution.
• Monitor project performance using key performance indicators (KPIs), milestones, and communicate progress and recommend corrective actions as needed.
• Ensure adherence to the department’s project management methodologies, governance standards, compliance requirements, SDLC methodology, and quality management practices across assigned projects.
• Demonstrate the ability to independently manage highly visible, strategic initiatives with minimal supervision while maintaining executive confidence and stakeholder trust.
• Manage relationships with project vendors and third parties—tracking deliverables, milestones, dependencies, performance, and risks, and escalating contractual or service issues in close partnership with Procurement, Legal, and business stakeholders.
• Build and maintain project resource plans; spot capacity, capability, and resource constraints early, then work with functional leaders to resolve competing priorities and conflicts.
• Keep project deliverables tightly aligned with strategic objectives, business outcomes, and approved benefits; partner with sponsors and benefit owners to define, measure, track, and report benefits realization through the full project lifecycle and into post-implementation.
• Collaborate with business leaders and change-management teams to assess organizational impacts, business readiness, stakeholder adoption, training, communications, and transition needs so the outcomes stick.
• Leverage project management technology, analytics, and AI-enabled tools where appropriate to improve planning, risk identification, forecasting, reporting, decision support, and delivery efficiency.
• Coach, advise, and mentor project stakeholders on project management methodology and governance best practices.

Qualifications

• Ba