The Senior Project Manager opportunity at Maricopa Community Colleges is a high-autonomy, execution-focused leader within the Enterprise Performance Office who independently leads complex system-wide initiatives from planning through adoption. This role requires an experienced project manager who is comfortable influencing without direct authority, navigating ambiguity, building alignment across diverse stakeholder groups, and driving measurable organizational change. Projects include strategic and operational initiatives that support institutional priorities.
Operating with minimal supervision, the Senior Project Manager helps to address operational gaps, develops practical solutions, facilitates cross-functional collaboration, and ensures project outcomes are successfully implemented and sustained.
Essential Functions
45% - Enterprise Project Leadership & Operational Execution
- Leads and drives complex, multi-functional, and politically sensitive enterprise-wide initiatives of an operational or strategic nature, from inception through institutional adoption, with minimal supervisory intervention
- Navigate organizational ambiguity by proactively identifying and filling operational gaps, such as crafting communications, mapping workflows, or creating documentation for cross-functional areas
- Facilitates defining project scope, critical paths, and resource requirements, working with executive sponsors to translate high-level vision into actionable operational plans
- Designs and executes stakeholder management strategies to align competing priorities across diverse academic and administrative leadership groups
- Manages cross-functional project teams and keeps key stakeholders informed on project progress
- Develops and delivers project plans, status reports, presentations, communications, training materials, and other project documentation
25% - Proactive Problem Solving
- Proactively identifies institutional roadblocks early to develop and execute independent mitigation strategies; formulates and presents clear, recommended solutions to leadership for issues requiring formal escalation
- Prepares and maintains right-sized, practical project management structure and artifacts tailored to the organizations current project management maturity level
- Documents project lessons learned
- Monitors project risks and recommends solutions to mitigate.
15% - Change Management & Institutional Adoption
- Anticipates culture-driven responses and applies practical change management techniques to ensure long-term adoption of new business processes
- Develops and executes comprehensive change management, communication, and/or training plans for diverse stakeholder groups
10% - Fiscal, Procurement, & Vendor Navigation
- Manages project-related expenditures and navigates institutional procurement processes as needed for projects
- Establishes and maintains working relationships with vendors, contractors, and procurement and fiscal departments as needed
5% - Performs other duties as assigned