Senior Project Manager

Title: Senior Project Manager
Duration: 12 Months Contract
Location: San Diego, CA
Client: The County of San Diego

This individual will lead and coordinate the Assessor Enterprise Modernization Program, a portfolio of technology modernization, business transformation, infrastructure transition, and operational initiatives. The centerpiece of the program is the replacement of ARCC's aging mainframe-based Property Assessment System with a modern enterprise platform while simultaneously supporting application, infrastructure, and cloud migration initiatives.

This is not simply an implementation-vendor PM position. The Senior Project Manager will represent ARCC's interests independently of the software and implementation vendors, serving as a trusted advisor to County leadership and coordinating across County departments, technology teams, consultants, vendors, business stakeholders, and executive leadership.

The ideal candidate will have successfully led multiple large-scale, $10M+ enterprise technology modernization programs in local government, preferably including property assessment, CAMA, property tax, land records, permitting, or similarly complex government platforms.

The person must be comfortable entering a complex modernization environment, rapidly assessing its current state, establishing governance and accountability, integrating multiple schedules and workstreams, identifying risks independently, holding vendors accountable, and driving the program through testing, data conversion, organizational readiness, cutover, go-live, stabilization, and transition to operations.

Responsibilities will include:

• Enterprise system implementation planning and coordination
• Program and project governance
• Software and implementation vendor management
• Requirements management support
• Business readiness
• Systems integration coordination
• Testing and UAT coordination
• Data migration and data conversion planning
• Cutover planning
• Go-live readiness
• Implementation readiness
• Post-production stabilization

Data Center Exit and Cloud Transition;
The Senior Project Manager will also coordinate initiatives associated with ARCC's transition from its current data center environment to modern platforms, including:

• Application migration planning
• Infrastructure transition
• Cloud migration
• Disaster recovery planning
• Business continuity
• Infrastructure modernization

Broader Enterprise Modernization;
The County may assign additional initiatives involving:

• Enterprise software implementations
• Application modernization
• Systems integration
• Automation
• Artificial Intelligence initiatives
• Cybersecurity
• Data governance
• Reporting and analytics
• Digital services
• Business process improvement
• Organizational change management
• Portfolio management

Key Responsibilities; Enterprise Program Leadership

• Serve as ARCC's lead project manager for the Assessor Enterprise Modernization Program.
• Act as an owner-side project management and strategic advisory resource, independent of implementation vendors.
• Provide objective assessments and recommendations to ARCC executive leadership.
• Coordinate multiple concurrent business and technical initiatives.
• Establish accountability across County teams, vendors, consultants, and implementation partners.
• Maintain alignment among program objectives, statutory obligations, budgets, schedules, operational requirements, and County priorities.
• Protect continuity of critical Assessor operations throughout modernization.

Integrated Program Planning

• Develop and maintain the Integrated Master Schedule.
• Integrate County, vendor, consultant, infrastructure, application, data, integration, testing, training, procurement, organizational readiness, and cutover schedules.
• Identify critical-path activities and cross-project dependencies.
• Track milestones, deliverables, actions, decisions, and deadlines.
• Identify schedule conflicts and downstream impacts before they threaten critical milestones.
• Coordinate resource requirements across concurrent workstreams.

Governance and Executive Leadership

• Establish and maintain executive-level governance processes.
• Coordinate Executive Sponsor and Steering Committee meetings.
• Facilitate governance meetings, workshops, and stakeholder sessions.
• Establish decision-making and escalation protocols.
• Develop executive dashboards, decision papers, presentations, and briefing materials.
• Present complex technical and program information in clear business terms.
• Escalate material risks and decisions requiring executive intervention.
• Support briefings for Department leadership, the Chief Administrative Office, and potentially the Board of Supervisors.

Vendor and Contract Management

• Oversee and monitor software vendors, implementation partners, consultants, and other third parties.
• Monitor contractual milestones and vendor commitments.
• Evaluate vendor performance against contractual requirements.
• Review deliverables for quality, completeness, and alignment with requirements.
• Identify vendor delivery or performance issues independently.
• Recommend corrective actions.
• Track remediation activities through closure.
• Support procurement and contract implementation activities.
• Review vendor invoices and validate associated work and deliverables.
• Maintain productive vendor relationships while representing the County's interests.

Risk, Issue, Decision and Dependency Management

• Establish and maintain RAID and decision-management processes.
• Proactively identify program risks and dependencies.
• Assess schedule, budget, scope, quality, resource, technical, vendor, and operational risks.
• Define escalation thresholds.
• Develop mitigation and contingency strategies.
• Track decisions, owners, due dates, and required actions.
• Communicate material concerns promptly to County leadership.
• Challenge overly optimistic vendor or project reporting when supported by evidence.

Financial and Budget Management

• Monitor program financial performance in coordination with ARCC Financial Planning.
• Track budgets and expenditures.
• Maintain forecasts to completion.
• Analyze financial implications of schedule and scope changes.
• Track change orders and potential budget variances.
• Incorporate financial status into executive program reporting.

Implementation, Testing and Go-Live Readiness; Coordinate readiness across:

• Requirements
• Design and configuration
• Systems integration
• Data migration and conversion
• Testing
• UAT
• Training
• Organizational readiness
• Operational readiness
• Business continuity
• Cutover
• Go-live
• Stabilization
• Transition to ongoing operations

The candidate should have personally managed enterprise implementations through deployment/go-live and/or post-production stabilization, not simply planning or requirements phases.

Organizational Change and Stakeholder Management

• Develop stakeholder engagement strategies.
• Coordinate organizational change management.
• Coordinate communications and training.
• Build alignment among business and technology stakeholders.
• Manage competing priorities and stakeholder expectations.
• Facilitate cross-departmental decision-making.
• Prepare business organizations for changes to processes, technology, responsibilities, and workflows.

Knowledge Transfer and Sustainability:
The Senior PM must leave ARCC with stronger internal capabilities rather than create dependency on the contractor.
Responsibilities include:

• Transfer project management knowledge to County personnel.
• Establish repeatable governance processes.
• Document methodologies and tools.
• Conduct role-based knowledge transfer.
• Preserve institutional knowledge.
• Develop transition documentation.
• Establish sustainable management practices for the resulting systems.

Mandatory Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum 10 years of progressively responsible professional project and/or management experience.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in a local government environment.
• Minimum 5 years leading large-scale, complex enterprise technology implementation or modernization projects with budgets of $10 million or greater.
• Must have served in a lead project/program management role for at least three enterprise system implementations through implementation, deployment/go-live, and/or post-production stabilization.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating multiple concurrent workstreams involving business stakeholders, technical teams, vendors, consultants, and executive leadership.
• Demonstrated experience managing scope, schedules, budgets, risks, issues, decisions, dependencies, vendor performance, and executive reporting.
• Demonstrated hands-on leadership involving multiple major implementation activities such as requirements management, systems integration, data migration/conversion, testing, organizational readiness, training, cutover, go-live, and stabilization.
• Demonstrated experience managing projects in public-sector, government, highly regulated, or similarly complex environments.

Strongly Preferred Experience; Property Assessment / CAMA Experience; Strong preference for candidates with experience involving:

• Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA)
• Property assessment systems
• Property tax administration
• Assessor systems
• Land records
• Recorder systems
• Permitting systems
• Parcel/property data
• Government revenue or taxation systems
• Comparable mission-critical local government enterprise platforms

Large Government Modernization Programs; Strong candidates should have experience leading modernization for:

• Counties
• Cities
• Municipal governments
• State/local government agencies
• Tax/assessment agencies
• Public-sector ERP or enterprise platform transformations
• County government experience is particularly valuable.

Legacy Modernization; Look for experience involving:

• Mainframe replacement
• Legacy application modernization
• Enterprise platform replacement
• Cloud migration
• Data center exit
• Infrastructure modernization
• Complex legacy integrations
• Large-scale data conversion

Required Project Management Knowledge; The candidate should have deep practical experience with:

• PMI standards
• PMBOK
• Agile
• Waterfall
• Hybrid delivery methodologies
• Program governance
• Portfolio management
• Integrated Master Scheduling
• Critical path management
• RAID management
• Executive reporting
• Vendor performance management
• Contract oversight
• Budget/forecast management
• Change control
• Organizational change management
• Business readiness
• Operational readiness
• Testing/UAT
• Data conversion/migration
• Cutover management
• Go-live management
• Post-production stabilization

The County explicitly expects the PM to select among PMI/PMBOK, Agile, Waterfall and hybrid approaches based on the nature of each initiative.

Preferred Certifications

• PMP - Project Management Professional
• PgMP - Program Management Professional
• Agile certifications
• Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or equivalent Scrum certification
• Prosci Change Management certification
• Other recognized program/project management credentials