Senior Project Manager

Summary

The Senior Project Manager (PM) leads complex, high-visibility projects with a high degree of independence, applying and modeling best practices across the project lifecycle

Projects span a broad range of business contexts including operational changes, process improvements, technology implementations, supplier or brand acquisitions, and facility or infrastructure changes. The PM serves as the central hub of project activity: facilitating alignment among cross-functional teams, managing stakeholder relationships, surfacing and mitigating risk, and ensuring that leaders and sponsors have accurate, timely information to support good decisions throughout the project lifecycle.

Primary Responsibilities

• Manage a portfolio of concurrent projects or lead complex, multi-phase programs, maintain visibility across interdependencies, shared resources, and competing priorities without loss of delivery quality on any workstream.
• Independently leads scope definition and charter development with executive sponsors and key stakeholders to define scope, objectives, success criteria, and change management needs.
• Constructs and drives comprehensive project plans and determines the most appropriate methodology to use.
• Provide informal coaching and peer review to Project Managers and Project Coordinators, sharing expertise to elevate team capability
• Negotiate clear expectations with vendors, enforce contractual accountability, and escalate performance gaps with recommended resolution paths.
• Facilitate project team meetings, working sessions, and decision points, creating conditions for productive dialogue, shared ownership, and clear accountability across functions.
• Build and maintain a stakeholder engagement plan; identify stakeholder interests, concerns, and influence levels early and maintain consistent, tailored communication throughout the project.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for project communication and provide regular, structured status updates to sponsors, stakeholders, and leadership that are accurate, transparent, and actionable.
• Develop and maintain a proactive risk register; identify, assess, and track risks and issues throughout the project lifecycle and drive mitigation and contingency planning with the appropriate team members.
• Manage project ensuring impacts are clearly documented and decisions are made at the appropriate level.
• Monitor and report on project performance against baseline scope, schedule, and budget using clear metrics and project dashboards; escalate variances with recommended corrective actions.
• Manage vendor and supplier deliverables by clearly communicating expectations, tracking performance, and holding parties accountable to contractual commitments.
• Produce accurate and thorough project documentation including charters, RACI documentation, decision logs, action trackers, bug trackers and lessons learned that support continuity and organizational learning.
• Adapts and optimizes methodology to fit project complexity.

Key Competencies

• Facilitation & Stakeholder Management -- Skilled at bringing cross-functional groups together to build consensus, resolve conflict, and move work forward. Able to identify stakeholder motivations and navigate competing priorities with diplomacy and transparency. Builds trust at all levels of the organization.
• Communication Proficiency -- Exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Able to tailor messaging to audience, whether presenting to executives, running a working session with operational teams, or drafting a project status report. Produces clear, concise, and accurate communications consistently.
• Risk Management -- Proactively identifies threats and opportunities across the project environment. Skilled at facilitating risk conversations with teams and leaders, developing mitigation strategies, and maintaining visibility into risk status throughout delivery.
• Project Management -- Strong command of project management fundamentals: scope definition, scheduling, budgeting, resource planning, and change control. Demonstrated track record of delivering projects on time and within budget while managing complexity and ambiguity.
• Business Acumen -- Understands how Columbia Distributing operates as a beverage distribution business and how projects connec