Senior Manager, IT Project Delivery

Forrest T. Jones & Company, Inc., and its affiliates (“FTJ”), provide insurance and insurance related services to clients, corporations, employers and individuals. These services include providing benefits through innovative life and health insurance plans, financial services, and customized insurance products for niche markets. 

Position Summary

The Senior Manager, IT Project Delivery, leads a team of Project Managers, Business Analysts, and Quality Assurance Analysts responsible for delivering technology projects and product initiatives that support all business areas across FSL and FTJ. This role provides leadership and oversight for project execution, portfolio management, and delivery excellence.

The Senior Manager partners with business and technology leaders to manage project portfolios, support annual planning activities, and facilitate the prioritization of initiatives across the organization. This role aligns technology, resource capacity, budgets, and delivery timelines with strategic business objectives, ensuring resources are focused on the highest-value work. The Sr. Manager provides visibility into portfolio health, resource utilization, budget performance, and strategic alignment to enable informed decision-making and effective prioritization.

The Senior Manager develops and delivers executive and stakeholder reporting that provides transparency into current and planned initiatives, portfolio performance, resource capacity, financial performance, risks, and strategic outcomes.

In collaboration with IT Directors and Managers, the Senior Manager develops, monitors, and communicates enterprise IT resource plans to optimize capacity, balance demand, and support business priorities.

Additionally, the Senior Manager is accountable for forecasting, monitoring, and controlling project and portfolio costs, including hours, and for tracking actual versus planned costs. This role also provides enterprise-wide visibility into technology by consolidating, tracking, and reporting technology budgets and spending across all departments, including IT, to support effective financial planning and governance of technology-related expenditures.

Expectations

• Develop and maintain a portfolio management framework that aligns technology and strategy, resource capacity, product roadmaps, and project delivery initiatives with the business’ priorities and organizational strategy.
• Partner with IT Leadership to establish and continuously improve Agile Program Management practices that enable incremental delivery of business value and alignment with organizational priorities.
• Collaborate with business and technology stakeholders to identify unmet business needs and opportunities, evaluate solution alternatives, and develop technology roadmaps that support strategic objectives.
• Lead and mentor the team in building strong partnerships with business stakeholders to ensure business needs are understood, requirements are well defined and testable, and features are continuously built, tested, and delivered in agreed upon intervals and timelines. 
• Own project scope, budget, schedule, and delivery by engaging, tracking and supporting all IT and business stakeholders. 
• Proactively manage project and portfolio risks, issues, dependencies, assumptions, such that they are escalated and resolved to ensure successful delivery.
• Work with IT Leadership to develop a Technology budget and track actual vs. projected cost on agreed upon intervals.
• Coordinate with IT Leadership to develop and track IT resource capacity plans that determine how and when IT resource utilization in projects could be optimized to deliver business value.
• Provide and communicate executive-level reporting, providing visibility into portfolio health, project status, resource utilization, financial impacts, risks, and alignment to the organization’s strategy.
• Develop and mentor team to facilitate the next generation of leaders in Project Management, Portfolio Management, and IT Business Management.
• Build strong relationships within the organization to understand business challenges and opportunities.

Competencies

• Extensive experience with guiding teams that manage projects and programs following Agile Methodologies
• Deep understanding of Resource Capacity planning 
• Proven track record of end-to-end ownership for planning, execution, and delivering results.
• Build and mentor high performing teams that take ownership and accountability on assigned projects and meet deadline expectations. 
• Proven ability to influence stakeholders and build consensus, collaborating and communicating effectively across all levels of the organization.
• Handle multiple competing initiatives/priorities and promptly toggle between them with ease.
• Strong risk management skills, including identifying, assessing, mitigating, and communicating project and portfolio risks.
• Customer Service oriented; ability to build strong partnerships with business stakeholders and IT leaders.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of summarizing and concisely presenting ideas.
• Willingness to explore, drive new ideas along with the ability to lead organizational change and drive adoption of new processes, methodologies, and technologies.
• Experience in managing budgets over $5 million.

Requisites

• Bachelor’s degree in management information systems, business, or related fields. 
• Minimum 10 years of experience leading technology projects, programs, portfolios, or PMO functions.
• Minimum 8 years with project portfolio management experience with significant Agile Delivery experience
• Proven record of excellent project delivery satisfying business expectations and executing the projects on time, with quality and under budget
• Minimum of 5 years of people leadership experience, including performance management, coaching, and team development. 
• PMP Certification 
• Previous Insurance business experience desired
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, Project), SharePoint, Azure DevOps, Power BI, and collaboration tools such as Teams

We offer comprehensive benefits to full-time employees including company-paid medical, STD, LTD and life insurance plus voluntary dental, vision, life/AD&D insurance, 401(k) with company matching, generous paid time off and much more. 

We encourage applicants of all ages and experience, as we do not discriminate on the basis of an applicant’s age. 

ALL OFFERS OF EMPLOYMENT ARE CONTINGENT UPON THE PASSING OF A DRUG SCREEN AND BACKGROUND CHECK.