Program Manager

Title: Program Manager


Locations: Columbus, OH (Hybrid)

Local Candidates preferred

Years of Relevant Experience:
• 10+ years Project/Program Management experience
• 10+ years' experience with full lifecycle implementation projects from requirements definition through implementation

Preferred Education:


4-year college degree or equivalent technical study

Job Description:


The Program Manager directs, controls, and administers programs and projects within the organization. The Program Manager is the individual ultimately responsible for execution of assigned projects and management of the project team. The Program Manager's primary responsibility is to drive initiatives from start to finish. The Program Manager must ensure that the program/project is completed on schedule and that the final product meets the business, technical, and established quality requirements.

The Program Manager has proven experience with a technical specialty across large and complex implementations and systems. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Manages the complete lifecycle of projects, including initiation, planning, requirements gathering, execution, and closure.
• Responsible for project compliance with established agency and project management standards and procedures.
• Develop a detailed program/project plan, including identification of project needs and definition of tasks and milestones, all based on scope, budget, and resources.
• Accountable for delivery of all work tasks identified in the program/project plan.
• Responsible for the capture and reporting of required program/project management metrics.
• Ensure all changes to scope follow established change procedures and are documented.
• Accountable for management of scope for the program/project and gaining agreement and approval of scope changes with project sponsor and affected stakeholders.
• Manage and track the program/project progress against the program/project plan.
• Monitor project milestones and phases to ensure the project is on schedule. Take corrective actions if a project begins to slip its schedule.
• Prepares status reports on a weekly basis for program/project team, project sponsor(s), team leads, group leads, and appropriate stakeholders.
• Plan, organize, prioritize, and manage multiple work efforts across teams.
• Responsible to tailor and baseline all program/project templates.
• Accountable to schedule or monitor status reviews, peer reviews, program/project management inspections, and software quality assurance work product and process reviews with the appropriate designated resources.
• Notify team leads of project timelines, milestones, phases, work requests, and target dates.
• Communicate and work with users, external partners/vendors, and other State agencies as necessary.
• Analyse and distribute reports on program/project metrics associated with work items.
• Accountable for the approval and sign-off of the program/project plan from project sponsor and all affected program/project stakeholders.
• Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders and project sponsor.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for all program/project-related issues and resolution of issues.
• Anticipate issues and proactively address them.
• Coordinate and present proposals to agencies as necessary.
• Identify and manage program/project risk and develops risk mitigation strategies, track to closure.
• Develop and facilitate achievement of program/project service commitments and performance metrics.
• Ensure that tasks provide value and support the strategic direction of the program/project and meet service commitments, conduct reviews with stakeholders.
• Accountable for the final program/project management evaluation review with stakeholders for approval upon program/project completion.
• Communicate effectively with customers and software / hardware suppliers supporting the State as appropriate.
• Balance workload with program/project team members' capacity.
• Communicate with team members on how their work assignments relate to and help achieve program/project objectives.
• Plan program/project specific training and orientation needs

Mandatory skills:


Project & Vendor Management
• Ability to effectively communicate with written and verbal communication to all levels of an organization, from front line staff to C-level executives.
• Ability to manage complex, multi-system programs over extended periods of delivery cycles.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams across business, legal, compliance, IT, and vendors.
• Strong analytical and decision making skills applied to multi-system impact analysis, risk mitigation, and cross-agency coordination
• Proficiency in use of project management software.


Vendor Management
• Extensive experience managing vendor-led projects including triage, prioritization, contracts, SLAs, and backlog grooming.
• Experience coordinating multi-vendor environments and cross-platform integrations.


Technical & Platform Experience
• Experience leading implementation or enhancement projects for SaaS, PaaS, and COTS vendor platforms
• Experience managing agile projects with the use of Azure DevOps
• Experience integrating APIs across government systems or multi-vendor platforms.


Regulatory experience
• Experience managing IT projects in regulated environments (e.g. compliance, licensing, medical systems, audit-driven applications)
• Experience with data privacy, security, and compliance considerations.


Certifications:
• Certification in Program or Project Management (PMP, PMI-ACP, Prosci Change Management, ITIL)

Business Domain Experience:
• Experience with seed-to-sale or inventory tracking systems
• Experience with public facing data portals or dashboards
• Experience with licensing systems, case management systems, or compliance operations
• Experience supporting public-facing portals with high-volume constituent or licensee interactions
• Experience managing projects involving significant policy or legislative changes, aligning with DCC's ongoing updates
• Experience with state government procurement processes, RFP development, vendor selection
• Government and/or Public Sector project experience


Nice to Have Skills
• Familiarity with medical or cannabis regulatory technology (not mandatory, but beneficial)
• Experience with QR code / product labelling technologies.
• Experience in data modelling or BI/reporting tools.
• Experience with web platform redesigns or public website development, especially involving system integrations
• Change management
• Business analysis
• Conflict resolution


Required skills

• Certification in Program or Project Management (PMP, PMI-ACP, Prosci Change Management, IT
• Experience leading implementation or enhancement projects for SaaS, PaaS, and COTS vendor platforms effectively communicate with written and verbal communication to all levels of an organization, from front line staff to C-level executive 10+ years Project/Program Management experience
• 10+ years' experience with full lifecycle implementation projects from requirements definition through implementation
• Experience with web platform redesigns or public website development, especially involving system integrations
• Experience in data modelling or BI/reporting tools.
• Experience with QR code / product labelling technologies.
• Familiarity with medical or cannabis regulatory technology (not mandatory, but beneficial)
• Government and/or Public Sector project experience