Information Technology Project Manager

The State of Alabama in Montgomery is searching a long-term Project Manager – Information Technology for the planning, coordination, execution, monitoring, and successful delivery of complex information technology projects in support of organizational goals, business priorities, and technology strategies. This position requires an experienced project management professional capable of independently managing projects across the full project lifecycle, from initial intake and business case development through implementation, operational transition, benefits realization, and formal closure.

The IT Project Manager establishes project governance, develops and maintains comprehensive project plans, manages scope, schedules, budgets, resources, risks, issues, and dependencies, and coordinates the efforts of executive leadership, business stakeholders, technical teams, subject-matter experts, vendors, and other project participants. The position facilitates informed decision-making, maintains accountability for approved project objectives, and proactively addresses conditions that may affect project performance or successful delivery.

The successful candidate demonstrates substantial experience managing enterprise technology initiatives, applying recognized project management methodologies, navigating complex organizational environments, and translating business objectives into actionable project outcomes. The position requires strong analytical, organizational, communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills, together with the professional judgment necessary to manage competing priorities, resolve complex issues, and escalate matters requiring management direction.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

1. Project Initiation and Strategic Alignment: Facilitate project intake, charter development, stakeholder identification, business case validation, and strategic alignment to ensure proposed projects support organizational goals, technology strategies, business priorities, and established investment objectives.
2. Project Planning and Management: Develop, maintain, and manage comprehensive project plans encompassing scope, schedules, milestones, budgets, resources, dependencies, assumptions, constraints, risks, issues, deliverables, and success criteria throughout the project lifecycle.
3. Project Governance and Accountability: Establish and maintain appropriate project governance structures, including decision-making processes, accountability mechanisms, escalation paths, steering committees, reporting requirements, and stakeholder engagement practices commensurate with project size, complexity, risk, and strategic importance.
4. Project Execution and Delivery: Lead the planning, execution, monitoring, and delivery of multiple IT projects while maintaining accountability for approved scope, schedule, budget, quality, resources, risks, and expected business outcomes.
5. Stakeholder and Cross-Functional Coordination: Collaborate with executive leadership, business stakeholders, technical teams, subject-matter experts, and vendors to establish project objectives, define and validate requirements, resolve issues, facilitate decisions, and ensure successful project outcomes.
6. Executive Communication and Decision Support: Facilitate executive and stakeholder decision-making by identifying matters requiring leadership direction and presenting relevant options, recommendations, risks, costs, benefits, dependencies, and organizational impacts to support timely and informed decisions.
7. Project Interdependency and Enterprise Coordination: Manage project interdependencies and enterprise impacts by identifying and coordinating dependencies among projects, systems, programs, business units, vendors, and technology initiatives to minimize conflicts, resource constraints, duplication of effort, and operational disruption.
8. Performance Monitoring and Reporting: Establish and maintain project performance measures and reporting processes to monitor milestones, schedules, budgets, risks, issues, deliverables, key performance indicators, and success criteria; analyze performance trends; and recommend corrective actions when objectives or baselines are at risk.
9. Risk and Issue Management: Identify, assess, manage, and communicate project risks and issues through proactive planning, mitigation and contingency strategies, issue-resolution processes, timely escalation, and continuous monitoring of factors that could affect project success.
10. Budget and Financial Management: Administer project budgets and financial performance by forecasting costs, monitoring expenditures and commitments, analyzing variances, identifying funding and resource requirements, and recommending cost-effective solutions while maintaining project objectives and approved financial parameters.
11. Scope, Requirements, and Change Control: Manage project scope, requirements, and change control by maintaining requirements traceability, evaluating change requests, assessing business and technical impacts, documenting decisions, and ensuring approved changes remain aligned with established project baselines and objectives.
12. Quality Assurance, Testing, and Acceptance: Coordinate quality assurance, quality control, testing, and acceptance activities, including test planning, user acceptance testing, requirements validation, production readiness reviews, formal acceptance, and verification that deliverables satisfy approved business and technical requirements.
13. Technology Risk, Security, and Compliance Coordination: Ensure project solutions appropriately address enterprise technology, cybersecurity, privacy, data protection, accessibility, business continuity, and applicable regulatory requirements by coordinating with appropriate technical and subject-matter experts throughout the project lifecycle.
14. Organizational Readiness and Change Management: Assess organizational readiness and lead implementation and change-management activities by evaluating operational, workforce, process, policy, training, communication, and technology impacts and coordinating activities necessary to support successful adoption of new technologies and business processes.
15. Operational Transition and Support Readiness: Coordinate the transition of completed solutions into operational support by ensuring service requirements, system and technical documentation, support procedures, monitoring requirements, ownership assignments, knowledge transfer, training, and operational readiness activities are established before production implementation.
16. Vendor, Procurement, and Contract Management: Manage vendor relationships, procurement activities, and contract performance by coordinating statements of work, deliverables, milestones, acceptance criteria, vendor performance, contractual obligations, invoices, and service delivery in collaboration with procurement, legal, finance, and business stakeholders.
17. Compliance, Audit, and Project Documentation: Ensure project activities comply with organizational policies, governance frameworks, cybersecurity standards, regulatory requirements, audit requirements, and quality standards while maintaining appropriate project documentation, approvals, decisions, evidence, and corrective-action records throughout the project lifecycle.
18. Team Leadership and Resource Management: Lead organizational and cross-functional project teams by establishing clear expectations, responsibilities, and performance objectives; coordinating resource allocation and capacity requirements; resolving resource conflicts; fostering accountability and collaboration; and providing mentoring and guidance to project team members and less-experienced project managers.
19. Methodology Application and Continuous Improvement: Apply and continuously improve industry-standard project management methodologies and practices, including Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, and Hybrid approaches; evaluate project performance and lessons learned; and recommend improvements to project management standards, processes, tools, templates, governance, and delivery practices.
20. Benefits Realization and Project Closure: Evaluate project outcomes and realization of anticipated business benefits by validating deliverables, obtaining stakeholder acceptance, conducting post-implementation reviews, measuring business and operational performance against established objectives, identifying unresolved issues or opportunities for improvement, documenting lessons learned, and ensuring successful transition and project closure.

Required Qualifications

• Demonstrated professional experience managing information technology projects throughout the project lifecycle, including initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, implementation, and closure.
• Experience independently managing projects involving multiple stakeholders, cross-functional teams, competing priorities, complex dependencies, and significant business or technology impacts.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain integrated project plans, schedules, budgets, resource plans, risk registers, issue logs, and project performance reports.
• Experience establishing project governance, facilitating stakeholder and executive decisions, managing project changes, and escalating material risks and issues appropriately.
• Demonstrated experience in budget monitoring, cost forecasting, resource coordination, vendor management, and project performance oversight.
• Experience coordinating business requirements, quality assurance, testing, user acceptance, implementation readiness, and operational transition.
• Demonstrated ability to maintain accurate project documentation and support organizational governance, audit, security, accessibility, and compliance requirements.
• Experience applying recognized project management methodologies and adapting project delivery practices to the needs and complexity of individual initiatives.
• Strong analytical, organizational, written communication, verbal communication, facilitation, negotiation, and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams, manage competing priorities, resolve complex issues, and maintain accountability for project outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Current professional project management certification, such as Project Management Professional (PMP), issued by the Project Management Institute, or an equivalent recognized project management credential.
• Substantial experience managing enterprise-level IT projects, technology modernization initiatives, system implementations, integrations, or organizational transformation efforts.
• Experience managing projects involving cybersecurity, data protection, accessibility, business continuity, regulatory compliance, and enterprise operational requirements.
• Experience with Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, and Hybrid project delivery methodologies.
• Experience managing public-sector, regulated-industry, or other complex organizational projects subject to formal governance, procurement, audit, and accountability requirements.
• Experience mentoring project managers and contributing to the development or improvement of enterprise project management practices.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

The successful candidate must demonstrate the ability to:

• Independently organize, direct, monitor, and control complex IT project activities.
• Translate business objectives into defined project deliverables, measurable outcomes, and executable plans.
• Analyze complex problems, evaluate alternatives, assess impacts, and recommend practical solutions.
• Communicate technical and project-related information effectively to executive, business, and technical audiences.
• Identify emerging risks, anticipate dependencies, and implement corrective actions before project objectives are materially affected.
• Exercise sound professional judgment regarding issue resolution, change control, resource allocation, and escalation.
• Establish effective working relationships across organizational boundaries and with external vendors and partners.
• Maintain accurate, complete, and defensible project records.
• Lead organizational change and coordinate the activities required for successful implementation and adoption.
• Evaluate project performance and business outcomes and use lessons learned to improve future delivery.

Professional Expectations

The IT Project Manager is expected to demonstrate a high degree of independence, accountability, professionalism, and sound judgment. The position is responsible for proactively identifying issues, communicating project status accurately, recommending corrective actions, and ensuring that decisions and changes are appropriately documented and approved.

The incumbent must balance schedule, cost, scope, quality, risk, resource capacity, and business value while maintaining alignment with organizational priorities. The position requires the ability to distinguish between matters that can be resolved through established project authority and those requiring executive or governance-level direction.

Successful performance is measured not solely by the completion of project activities or installation of technology, but by the delivery of approved outcomes, effective operational transition, stakeholder acceptance, and realization of anticipated business benefits.