Senior IT Project Manager

Great Lakes Cheese - Hiram, OH

Full-time - Senior

Hiram, OH

Food Manufacturing

About the position

The Senior IT Project Manager at Great Lakes Cheese is tasked with overseeing all aspects of the project lifecycle, particularly in support of strategic initiatives across various functional domains within the company. This role is critical in ensuring that projects are delivered on time, within budget, and meet the expected results. The Senior IT Project Manager will manage projects that span IT infrastructure, network, security, and business applications, ensuring that all elements of the project are aligned with the company's goals and objectives. In this position, you will be responsible for managing the full lifecycle of complex IT projects and programs, from initiation to closure. This includes effectively managing multiple projects simultaneously in accordance with PMI standards. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to define stakeholders, requirements, scope, milestones, dependencies, costs, success criteria, and resources necessary for project success. Developing and maintaining project management plans is essential, as is the ability to monitor project progress and provide regular status reports to stakeholders, highlighting project health, risks, and issues. The role also involves managing project risks and issues, identifying potential roadblocks, and providing solutions to ensure successful outcomes. You will be responsible for managing project scope changes, ensuring that all changes are documented, reviewed, and approved by stakeholders. Additionally, you will create and maintain project schedules throughout the entire project lifecycle, manage project change control affecting constraints such as time, cost, scope, resources, quality, and risk, and develop comprehensive communication plans to keep all levels of the organization informed. As a Senior IT Project Manager, you will also be expected to facilitate post-implementation reviews and contribute to continuous improvement efforts. All employees at Great Lakes Cheese are expected to adhere to safety policies and procedures and to produce products that exceed customer expectations by following Good Manufacturing Practices and the Safe Quality Food Program.

Responsibilities

• Manage the full lifecycle of complex IT projects and/or programs from initiation to closure, ensuring successful delivery within budget, scope, and schedule constraints.
• Effectively manage multiple projects simultaneously according to PMI standards.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define stakeholders, requirements, scope, milestones, dependencies, costs, success criteria, and resources.
• Develop and maintain project management plans and deliver projects on-time, on budget, and with promised results.
• Monitor project progress and provide regular project status reports to stakeholders, including project health, risks, and issues.
• Manage project risks and issues, identifying and mitigating potential roadblocks and providing solutions to ensure successful outcomes.
• Manage project scope changes and ensure that they are documented, reviewed, and approved by stakeholders.
• Create, manage, and maintain the project schedule, from initial creation throughout the entire project life cycle.
• Manage project change control affecting project constraints including time, cost, scope, resources, quality, and risk.
• Develop and manage end-to-end communications plans and manage project communications at all levels, from shop floor to top floor.
• Create and maintain all forms of project documentation and records.
• Collaborate with IT leaders to develop and rollout IT PMO standards and processes.
• Effectively manage product budget and work with a project controller as needed.
• Effectively liaise with other project managers (both internal and external) and across functions within the organization to ensure alignment across all project aspects.
• Facilitate post-implementation reviews and lessons learned to contribute to continuous improvement and development.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or relevant experience
• PMP certification
• At least 8 years of experience as a Technical Project Manager, leading and delivering complex technical projects successfully.
• Strong teamwork and cross-functional experience to problem solving and the ability to make sound, independent decisions.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills.
• Direct work experience with project management tools.
• Direct work experience managing projects with a budget of at least $1,000,000 from concept to completion.
• Ability to handle multiple tasks beyond the routine.
• High degree of independence, intuition, and initiative.
• Able to work in the US without corporate sponsorship now or in the future.
• Must be willing to travel at least 25%.

Nice-to-haves

• New COTS implementation experience (ERP, TMS, WMS, SCP, PLM, MDM, etc)
• Complex IT systems integration
• Manufacturing systems experience (MES, PLCs, SCADA)
• IT Infrastructure domain knowledge (Storage, compute, networking, telephony, end user systems)
• System domain knowledge (especially SAP)
• IT PMO establishment and execution
• Ability to provide leadership, support, communication and direction to others.