Senior IT Project Manager

Senior IT Project Manager

Location: Harrisburg, PA Work Arrangement: Primarily remote with onsite work in Harrisburg 1 day per month; additional onsite days may be required Schedule: 8 hours/day, 5 days/week Interview: Virtual Contract: Nov 2, 2026 - Jun 30, 2027. Historically, these roles are extended for an additional year. Visas Accepted: USC, GC, GC EAD, H1B

Role Overview

The Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs is seeking a Senior IT Project Manager to serve as the lead PM for several large, critical IT initiatives. A major focus will be the replacement of the iSMART Training Management System, along with continued support of the Web Infrastructure for Treatments product.

The Project Manager will own projects from initiation through delivery and will be responsible for maintaining schedule, budget, scope, quality, and stakeholder alignment. This position will work across business, technical, vendor, and program teams to plan project activities, resolve issues, manage risk, coordinate testing, and ensure successful implementation.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead large, strategically important IT projects throughout the complete project life cycle.
• Support DDAP Enterprise ELS initiatives and associated project work.
• Direct and facilitate enhancements, business-process reengineering, and development initiatives.
• Manage planning, design, programming, testing, implementation, and delivery activities.
• Develop estimates for enhancements, reengineering efforts, and development work.
• Develop detailed project management plans and project schedules.
• Obtain approval and sign-off of project plans from stakeholders and customer representatives.
• Define major tasks, milestones, schedules, scope, resources, budgets, and staffing needs.
• Track project progress against schedules and take corrective action when necessary.
• Monitor project budgets and advise appropriate stakeholders.
• Manage multiple concurrent work efforts across project teams.
• Communicate project timelines, milestones, target dates, phases, and approved work packages.
• Schedule and monitor status reviews, project inspections, and quality-assurance reviews.
• Capture and report required project-management metrics.
• Analyze and distribute project-metric reports.
• Manage scope changes through established change-management processes.
• Create and maintain communication plans and deliverables matrices.
• Prepare recurring status reports for project teams, leadership, sponsors, and stakeholders.
• Follow established PMO project-management standards and procedures.
• Support continuous improvement of project-management practices.
• Mentor less experienced project-management staff when needed.
• Coordinate work across application, data warehouse, informatics, solution-management, networking, security, and service-management teams.
• Facilitate discussions between IT areas and vendors to resolve program needs and requirements.
• Anticipate and manage project risks using a RAID log.
• Identify, document, track, and resolve project issues.
• Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders and customer representatives.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for project-related issues and resolution.
• Communicate effectively with customers and software/hardware suppliers.
• Conduct final project-management evaluations with stakeholders.
• Provide weekly project updates.
• Coordinate system testing with appropriate staff resources.
• Deliver presentations as needed.
• Ensure compliance with applicable PMO standards and procedures.
• Manage workload against project-team capacity.
• Coordinate training, orientation, peer reviews, and presentations when required.

Required Technical Skills

• Expert-level senior IT project-management experience.
• Demonstrated ability to manage large, complex technology initiatives.
• Active PMI Project Management Professional certification held for at least five years.
• Experience managing projects through the full project life cycle.
• Strong project planning, scheduling, budgeting, estimating, risk, issue, and stakeholder-management capabilities.
• Strong communication, facilitation, problem-solving, and cross-functional coordination skills.
• Current Pennsylvania residency.
• Ability to work onsite in Harrisburg one day per month and additional days when required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience implementing SaaS solutions.
• Strong, demonstrable Public Health background with an emphasis on Drug and Alcohol Programs.