Senior Project Manager - Higher Education

Senior Project Manager - Higher Education

We are seeking an experienced Senior Project Manager for a hybrid position in Sacramento, CA, with an expectation of being onsite 1–2 days per week (additional onsite days may be required during key project phases such as workshops, go-live readiness, or executive steering meetings) to lead large-scale organizational and technology transformation initiatives within a higher education environment, with a strong emphasis on community college districts.

This role is responsible for driving end-to-end project execution across multiple departments and stakeholder groups, establishing project governance, building integrated implementation roadmaps, managing risks and dependencies, and ensuring organizational readiness for change.

Responsibilities

Project Leadership & Transformation Strategy

• Lead planning, coordination, and execution of enterprise transformation initiatives (organizational, process, and technology).
• Develop project roadmaps, implementation strategies, schedules, milestones, and resource plans.
• Establish governance structures including decision-making forums, roles, responsibilities, and accountability models.
• Manage scope, timelines, budgets, risks, issues, dependencies, and deliverables to ensure successful outcomes.
• Align project objectives to institutional priorities, operational needs, and long-term strategy.

Higher Education Stakeholder Management

• Partner with executive leadership, academic administrators, and cross-functional teams to drive alignment and outcomes.
• Coordinate activities across Finance, HR, Student Services, IT, and other departments.
• Facilitate executive steering committees, stakeholder workshops, and working sessions to resolve issues and drive decisions.
• Navigate complex governance structures and decentralized stakeholder environments.
• Ensure sustained business ownership, participation, and accountability.

Project Planning & Execution

• Build and maintain integrated project plans spanning process improvement, requirements, data readiness, OCM, procurement, testing, and go-live preparation.
• Coordinate multiple workstreams across business, functional, and technical teams.
• Assess organizational capacity, resource needs, readiness, and dependencies.
• Proactively identify delivery risks and implement mitigation strategies.
• Provide executive-level reporting, performance measures, and status communications.

Organizational Transformation & Implementation Readiness

• Support modernization efforts involving business process redesign, operational improvements, and technology enablement.
• Partner with Organizational Change Management teams on communications, training, stakeholder engagement, and readiness planning.
• Coordinate with vendors/consultants and internal teams to support solution evaluation, procurement, and implementation activities.
• Support development of budgets, staffing plans, business cases, and implementation approaches.
• Ensure changes are sustainable and deliver measurable institutional improvements.

Requirements

Required Skills:

• 10+ years managing large-scale projects in transformation, modernization, business process improvement, or enterprise initiatives.
• 7+ years leading complex initiatives across multiple departments/functions/entities.
• 5+ years building/managing project roadmaps, integrated plans, governance structures, and resource plans.
• 5+ years facilitating executive-level stakeholder engagement, decision-making, prioritization, and executive reporting.
• 5+ years overseeing requirements, BPR, OCM, procurement, vendor coordination, testing, and readiness activities.
• Demonstrated project management experience in higher education.
• Direct experience working with community college districts (modernization, operational improvement, and/or transformation).
• Strong leadership, facilitation, communication, and cross-functional coordination skills.

Preferred Skills:

• ERP implementation/modernization/replacement project experience in higher education or public sector.
• Familiarity with Oracle Cloud ERP, Workday, PeopleSoft, or similar platforms.
• Experience spanning Finance, HR/HCM, SIS, and higher-ed administrative functions.
• Experience supporting ERP planning, RFP development, solution selection, SI selection, and implementation preparation.
• Experience in California higher education or similarly complex public sector organizations.
• Experience developing business cases, cost models, staffing plans, budgets, and forecasts.
• Certifications: PMP, PgMP, Prosci, SAFe (or similar).