Lead Project Manager

Job Title: Lead Project Manager

Location: Rutherford, NJ HYBRID W/ ONSITE

Duration: 12 months contract

Job Description:

The Project Lead is a strategic professional who stays abreast of developments within own field and contributes to directional strategy by considering their application in own job and the business. Recognized technical authority for an area within the business. Requires basic commercial awareness. There are typically multiple people within the business that provide the same level of subject matter expertise. Developed communication and diplomacy skills are required in order to guide, influence and convince others, in particular colleagues in other areas and occasional external customers. Significant impact on the area through complex deliverables. Provides advice and counsel related to the technology or operations of the business. Work impacts an entire area, which eventually affects the overall performance and effectiveness of the sub-function/job family.



Responsibilities:
• Manages a large multi-faceted project/account/campaign or multiple projects at the same time.
• Owns project goals leveraging expertise to inspire a sense of shared purpose within the project team.
• Organizes new challenges and drive business results.
• Uses best practice PMO methodology to create a project plan to fit the stakeholders/customers' needs and deliver within budget on desired outcomes.
• Drives end results of the project as a representative of the business.
• Works closely with the Customer, Sales Team, Engineering and Manufacturing to define a project scope and objectives for project members.
• Prepares, maintains, and submits clear and concise activity/progress reports and time recording/management reports.
• Assesses project risk potentials and discover potential problems before they occur.
• Applies a proactive approach in routinely tracking the project participant progress against project goals.
• Defines, teaches, and enforces the use of good project management practices such as techniques in resolving complex, interdependent activities into tasks and sub-tasks that are documented, monitored and controlled.
• Identifies and where required amends the approach to the context and constraints of each project.
• Constantly improving their own and their teams' skills through lessons-learned reviews at project completion.
• Possess the knowledge, skills and experience to be able to recognize when problems surface or potential problems are looming.
• Articulates problems, bring the right people together to solve problems and know when the problem has been properly addressed and closed.
• Promotes partner involvement through effectively communicating project status upward and to the Client.
• Applies lessons learned from recent projects to future projects.
• Communicates to all concerned parties project milestones, status updates, as well as any existing or potential customer escalation issues.
• Proactively follows escalation and change control processes.
• Owns all management reports on a given engagement.
• Promotes good working relationships across a project, cultivating the people skills needed to develop trust and communication among all of a project's stakeholders: its sponsors, those who will make use of the project's results, those who command the resources needed, and the project team members.
• Appropriately assess risk when business decisions are made, demonstrating particular consideration for the firm's reputation and safeguarding Citigroup, its clients and assets, by driving compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations, adhering to Policy, applying sound ethical judgment regarding personal behavior, conduct and business practices, and escalating, managing and reporting control issues with transparency.

Qualifications:
• 6+ years of project management experience
• 6+ years experience and knowledge of project metrics, including gathering, reporting, trend analysis, creation, and metrics.
• PMP certification strongly preferred, Six Sigma a plus.
• Ability to develop project plans, manage individual deadlines and goals.
• Ability to identify issues and problems, generate solutions and choose appropriate alternatives using basic root cause analysis.
• Manage project scope by assessing requirements changes, determining and conveying impact on budget, time and risk.
• Manage client expectations, anticipates operational and tactical risks and tracks them; clarify, identify, and track requirements and issues, remove barriers, resolve minor project issues and escalate to immediate manager where required.
• Proficient in MS Office applications, MS Project, VISIO, Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Education:
Bachelor Degree or equal experience
• Bachelor's/University degree, Master's degree preferred