IT Project Manager

IT Operations Project Manager

Job Type: Direct-hire
Location: Gilbert, AZ (Hybrid - 4 days onsite)
Salary Range: $95,000 - $105,000 base (flexible up to ~$110,000 for strong experience)

Summary

The IT Operations Project Manager is responsible for leading and coordinating infrastructure and IT operations initiatives that support enterprise growth and reliability. This role focuses on delivering complex projects across cloud platforms, networking, data centers, disaster recovery, and integration efforts. Reporting into IT operations leadership, the Project Manager provides portfolio-level visibility, ensures financial and resource alignment, and drives consistent execution across multiple concurrent initiatives. This position serves as a key liaison between technical teams, vendors, finance partners, and business stakeholders to ensure IT infrastructure scales effectively with business demands.

Responsibilities

• Oversee a portfolio of infrastructure and operations projects, tracking scope, schedule, budget, dependencies, and risks across all active initiatives.
• Develop and maintain executive-level dashboards and status reporting to communicate progress, financial health, and risk posture.
• Lead end-to-end planning and delivery of infrastructure projects including cloud migrations, network upgrades, virtualization, storage, backup/DR, data center initiatives, and integration activities.
• Build detailed project plans including scope definitions, work breakdown structures, schedules, resource allocation, and risk mitigation strategies.
• Manage project governance activities such as milestone tracking, change control, baseline management, and post-implementation reviews.
• Partner with finance teams to monitor budgets, burn rates, forecasts, and cost variances, ensuring accurate financial oversight.
• Coordinate capacity planning and scheduling with infrastructure and operations teams to align workloads with available resources.
• Drive stakeholder communication and change management, including outage, cutover, and go-live communications for major infrastructure changes.
• Identify project and portfolio-level risks early, recommend mitigation strategies, and escalate critical issues to leadership when needed.
• Support vendor and contractor coordination by managing deliverables, timelines, statements of work, and service commitments.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration between engineering teams, operations, vendors, and business stakeholders to resolve issues and maintain alignment.

Skills

• 5+ years of IT project management experience, with at least 3 years focused on infrastructure or IT operations initiatives.
• Strong working knowledge of IT infrastructure domains such as cloud platforms (Azure preferred), networking, virtualization, storage, backup and disaster recovery, and data center operations.
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously while maintaining portfolio-level visibility and prioritization.
• Experience with budget management, cost forecasting, and financial reporting for IT initiatives.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences and influence without formal authority.
• Demonstrated strength in risk management, issue resolution, and structured project execution.
• Familiarity with project and portfolio management tools such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Monday.com, or similar platforms.
• PMP or equivalent project management certification preferred.
• Bachelor's degree in a related technical or business field, or equivalent professional experience.