IT Project Manager

Role Title: IT Project Manager

Employment Type: Contract

Duration: 6 months with possible extensions

Preferred Location: Local to Northern Chicago area - 3 days onsite hybrid

Role Description:

We are seeking candidates with strong experience managing enterprise IT projects and working across business and technical teams. Preference for someone with SAP or ERP project experience, and application project expertise VS infrastructure.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Managing project scope, schedules, milestones, and dependencies
• Identifying and escalating risks and issues
• Coordinating cross-functional business and IT stakeholders
• Managing resources and driving project delivery
• Maintaining project governance, status reporting, and documentation
• Balancing multiple priorities in an enterprise IT environment
• Lead cross-functional, enterprise initiatives that enable key capabilities across commercial, supply chain, finance, procurement, and shared services. Ensure tight alignment to the Short-Range Plan (SRP) and Mid-Range Plan (MRP), delivering measurable outcomes in growth, margin, cash, customer experience, and cycle time. From a business lens, own governance, financials, risk, and benefits realization; translating strategy into execution. Oversee a concurrent portfolio of programs and projects, optimizing priorities, resources, and dependencies to deliver outcomes at scale.
• Lead a concurrent portfolio of high-impact projects, balance scope, schedule, capacity, and risk across teams.
• Align portfolio sequencing and investments to SRP/MRP priorities to accelerate strategic objectives.
• Build integrated roadmaps; defining outcomes, milestones, budgets, risks, and resource needs across multiple workstreams.
• Run executive governance and steering cadences; drive timely decisions, accountability, and business ownership.
• Manage cross-functional and cross-project dependencies, coordinate change impacts for cohesive enterprise outcomes.
• Partner with Legal, Finance, and Compliance to align with policies, risk appetite, and regulatory/control standards.
• Proactively manage risks/issues and scenario plans to protect business continuity and investment value.
• Track and communicate performance metrics, financial impacts (CapEx/OpEx), and benefits realization at both project and portfolio levels.
• Analyze business and technical requirements to develop implementation strategies, define technical workstreams, and support successful delivery of enterprise technology initiatives.
• Partner with solution architects, developers, and business stakeholders to evaluate technical dependencies, integration requirements, implementation risks, and solution impacts across enterprise systems.

Requirements:

Strong communication and stakeholder management skills are essential, along with the ability to bring structure, visibility, and accountability to project delivery.

Education & Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in information systems, Business Administration, Engineering, or related field.
• 6-8 years of IT program/project management experience, preferably in enterprise IT environments.
• Demonstrated success managing business systems implementations or integrations.
• Knowledge of agile and waterfall methodologies.
• Experience working with vendors, offshore teams, and matrixed resources.
• Familiarity with IT governance and compliance frameworks.
• PMP, SAFe, or comparable certification preferred.

Skills & Competencies

Technical:

• Tools: MS Project, Smartsheet, Power BI, Planview
• Collaboration: Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams
• Pluses: SAP or ERP, Application/software focused projects VS infrastructure projects

Soft Skills:

• Strategic mindset with the ability to translate business goals into actionable business strategies
• Strong executive presence to influence senior stakeholders across business and IT
• Ability to convey complex information in a clear and compelling way
• Proactive and adaptable leader with the ability to manage ambiguity and conflicting priorities
• High emotional intelligence and collaboration skills to lead cross-functional alignment
• Results-driven with a focus on continuous improvement and value delivery