Project Manager

Job Overview

The Project Manager owns the end-to-end delivery of assigned projects using disciplined planning, documentation, monitoring, control, and stakeholder management practices. The Project Manager is accountable for delivering projects on time, within approved scope and budget, and in alignment with business objectives, regulatory expectations, operational readiness needs, and Citadel standards.

This role requires proactive leadership, clear communication, rigorous follow-through, detailed project artifact management, and the ability to identify, escalate, and resolve risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and action items before they impact delivery.

Responsibilities

Planning

• Plan projects in order to accomplish its goals within constraints such as time, cost and agreed quality standards

• Meet with project stakeholders in order to gather and fully document all relevant requirements.

• Translate business needs into complete, traceable requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and project deliverables; maintain alignment between requirements, scope, testing, training, communication, and implementation activities.

• Schedule tasks, deadlines and milestones for all stakeholders and resources

• Build and maintain detailed project schedules with clear work breakdown structure, dependencies, owners, target dates, and realistic sequencing; keep schedules current as project conditions change.

• Create detailed chart of milestones for all parties

• Identify schedule uncertainties and risks for both client and IT

• Maintain project risk, issue, decision, action item, assumptions, dependency, change, and lessons learned logs as appropriate; ensure items are documented with owners, due dates, status, impacts, and resolution notes.

• Develop schedule contingency plans

• Day-to-Day Management

• Run the project on a day-to-day basis

• Drive accountability across project teams by clearly documenting commitments, following up on open items, escalating blockers appropriately, and ensuring stakeholders understand decisions, dependencies, and next steps.

• Lead project meetings with clear objectives, ensure the appropriate stakeholders are engaged, and close meetings with documented decisions, action items, owners, due dates, risks, issues, and next steps.

• Prepare and distribute accurate meeting minutes and follow-up communications within established departmental timeframes, ensuring stakeholders have a clear record of discussions, decisions, commitments, and required next steps.

• Coordinate team made up of various impacted business units.

• Lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity by clarifying scope, decision rights, ownership, and required participation from business, technology, compliance, information security, training, change management, vendor, and operational stakeholders.

• Coordinate project work across assigned business, technology, vendor, and operational resources based on approved scope, requirements, priorities, and delivery timelines.

• Communicate project work assignments, responsibilities, priorities, and expectations through appropriate project plans, task assignments, follow-up communications, and project management tools.

• Coordinate communication between project stakeholders, business partners, technology teams, vendors, and other third parties supporting project delivery.

• Efficiently and competently manage problems -- when things go off plan (due to scope-creep, changed requirements, missed deadlines etc.) bring them back on plan or create a new plan with the assistance of key-stakeholders

• Intimately understand the requirements of the project and ensure that work proceeds on-spec

• Evaluate deliverables prepared by the team to make sure the work meets requirements and maintains a high level of quality

• Constantly monitor and report on the progress of a project to all stakeholders

• Prepare concise, accurate, executive-ready project communications that summarize status, accomplishments, risks, issues, decisions needed, and upcoming milestones without omitting critical delivery details.

• Build and maintain stakeholder confidence through preparation, reliability, transparency, timely follow-through, professional communication, and visible ownership of project outcomes.

Design/Develop/Build/Buy

• Facilitate meetings with appropriate IT staff to devise a solution/workflow/prototype that will address and satisfy the business requirements.
• Work with IT Resources & Analyst as needed to revise scope & application/infrastructure architecture as needs of the client/project evolve
• Ensure solution decisions are sufficiently documented, reviewed with impacted stakeholders, and tied back to approved requirements, implementation plans, testing scope, operational readiness, and post-implementation support needs.
• Manage vendor-related project activities, deliverables, dependencies, communications, and escalation needs to ensure vendor commitments are clearly documented, actively tracked, and aligned to approved project timelines.
• Ensure operational readiness activities are planned, tracked, and completed, including training, communications, procedure updates, support model preparation, implementation planning, post-implementation stabilization, and transition to business-as-usual ownership.

Evaluation & Reporting

• Track and report project progress, schedule health, scope changes, resource constraints, risks, issues, action items, decisions, dependencies, and readiness activities.
• Ensure project artifacts and status information are complete, accurate, current, audit-ready, stored in the appropriate system of record, and sufficient for leadership, stakeholders, audit, or compliance partners to understand scope, status, decisions, risks, issues, dependencies, and delivery readiness without repeated clarification.
• Use project metrics, stakeholder feedback, and delivery outcomes to identify trends, address performance concerns, and continuously improve project execution.

Process

• Create, maintain & constantly look to improve production processes
• Provide detailed explanations (written and graphical) of production processes
• Apply consistent project management standards, templates, and artifact discipline while tailoring the level of detail to project complexity, stakeholder needs, and regulatory or audit expectations.

Project Intake, Estimation, and Planning Support

• Support project intake, estimation, planning, and prioritization activities by providing project approach, timeline assumptions, resource needs, risks, dependencies, and delivery considerations.
• Work with business stakeholders, technology partners, vendors, and impacted departments to support realistic budget, effort, timeline, and resource planning.
• Identify opportunities to reduce project risk, improve delivery efficiency, support prioritization, and align work with approved scope, budget, and business value.

Internal project reporting and administration

• Be prepared to discuss project quality, client and team satisfaction, and project success metrics during regularly scheduled and ad hoc project review meetings with the management.
• Track and report weekly on percent complete, budget burn, earned value, slippage, project effort and duration to complete and other key project metrics.
• Maintain a clear, current project record that supports leadership review, stakeholder alignment, operational handoff, lessons learned, and audit readiness.

Qualifications and Education Requirements

• 5-7 years experience in project management/ knowledge of application development, technology design, finance and management required.
• Demonstrated experience managing cross-functional business and technology initiatives with formal project artifacts, stakeholder communications, requirements documentation, risk management, testing coordination, implementation planning, and post-implementation support.
• Requires current, recent, and continuous experience in a dedicated Project Manager role with full delivery accountability; candidates whose project management experience occurred years ago, was interrupted by unrelated or non-project-management roles, or is primarily business analysis, requirements gathering, project coordination, technical project management, or technology execution without broader delivery ownership may not meet the expectations of this role.
• Requires broad project management experience across business, operational, regulatory, process, vendor, technology, testing, training, change management, and implementation activities, with demonstrated ownership of end-to-end delivery outcomes beyond a single workstream or execution function.
• Expert knowledge of Microsoft Project is required, including the ability to build, maintain, and interpret detailed project schedules with appropriate work breakdown structure, task sequencing, dependencies, durations, milestones, predecessors, successors, constraints, baselines, critical path, resource assignments, and schedule variance impacts.
• Strong proficiency with Microsoft Office applications and collaboration/project management tools used to manage documentation, tasks, comm

Education

• Associates Degree, Bachelor's Degree, or equivalent combination of experience and training. Coursework with a focus on the Project Management Discipline is required.
• PMP certification required.
• Expert knowledge of Microsoft Project is required, including the ability to build, maintain, and interpret detailed project schedules with appropriate work breakdown structure, task sequencing, dependencies, durations, milestones, predecessors, successors, constraints, baselines, critical path, resource assignments, and schedule variance impacts.
• Strong proficiency with Microsoft Office applications and collaboration/project management tools used to manage documentation, tasks, communications, dashboards, project records, and stakeholder reporting.

Additional Skills/Notes:

• Excellent organizational skills with demonstrated ability to execute projects on time and on budget. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain effective relationships and partnerships with key stakeholders.
• Strong interpersonal, communication, facilitation and presentation skills.
• Ability to ramp up quickly on new projects, business areas, systems, and stakeholder groups with limited onboarding, minimal supervision, and little to no day-to-day guidance; independently identifies needed information, asks informed questions, anticipates risks, challenges incomplete information, recommends paths forward, and moves work ahead without waiting for detailed direction.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a small team setting.
• High attention to detail with the ability to maintain accurate, complete, and well-organized project documentation without unnecessary rework or repeated correction.
• Ability to communicate status, risks, issues, and decisions in a clear, concise, professional, and audience-appropriate manner, including executive-level summaries and detailed working-level documentation.
• Demonstrated ownership mindset and active project leadership, consistently driving work forward, identifying owners, resolving ambiguity, escalating barriers early when progress is blocked, and maintaining accountability without repeated prompting.
• Must be able to apply innovative and effective management techniques to maximize employee performance.
• Thorough understanding of corporate and industry practices, processes, standards etc. And their impact on project activities is vital.
• Superior communication and interpersonal skills, including tact, diplomacy, and influence.