Sr. IT Project Manager

El Segundo, CA

We are seeking a Sr. IT Project Manager (PM) who will be responsible for leading project teams to deliver the project(s) that span across multiple business units for the L.A. Times, San Diego Union-Tribune and other news media brands.

The Sr. PM will be a liaison between business, IT, and several third-party vendors. This person will be creating comprehensive project plans, managing cross-functional resources, scope, interdependencies, timeline, and budget for these projects. This also includes management of issues, risks, and Change Requests (CR) to ensure successful, in-budget, and on-time project delivery and transition to Application Support and our Helpdesk. The person in this role will also contribute to process improvement and automation initiatives as it relates to improving project delivery.

Responsibilities:

Project manage requests for implementing new solutions, new feature requests to an existing product, bug fixes, operational reporting, and backlog requests to ensure agreed-upon budget timelines and milestones are met.
Closely support business and technology teams by keeping them honest to the identified scope and timeline.
Develop detailed project plans for multiple work tracks, build a centralized tracker to log issues within the project and/or program, open items, and risks.
Ensure all deadlines are met and all handoffs are successful as the project is moving through different SDLC phases.
Assess, communicate, and mitigate risk, utilizing contingency plans as necessary, and ensure the risks do not turn into issues.
Provide on-site leadership for the project team by building and motivating team members to meet project goals, adhering to their responsibilities and project milestones.
Communicate both detailed and high-level progress to stakeholders at large including executives.
Create and maintain documentation including steering committee decks, weekly status reports, sprint retrospective, executive summaries, and retrospectives.
Engage in strategic thinking to achieve long-term wins and efficiencies.
Conduct retrospectives, gather feedback, and report on project success criteria results and metrics.
Lead regular meetings with many cross-functional stakeholders to help them achieve optimal solutions by strategic decision making.
Keep a close eye on the budget versus actual spend for all the projects and alert the right stakeholders when any task/activity takes longer than the estimated time and falls on the critical path.
Coordinate and Manage RFPs from different vendors, by doing due diligence on the scope, cost-benefit analysis, working with legal to ensure it meets company’s legal requirements, and provide a summary to leadership; manage requirements for a Change Order (as needed).
Own end-to-end project management activities and take full ownership of project lifecycle.
Learn about the company’s various business departments and be pivotal to driving solutions.
Manage multiple projects.
Report on project success criteria results, metrics, test, and deployment management activities.
Deliver projects on time ensuring quality, compliance, legal and technical standards are met.
Provide detailed weekly status report outlining project milestones, the overall health of the project, dependencies, risks, and issues.
Work on drafting Change Management and Communication Plan for end-users.
Create a detailed cutover plan for Go-Live; highlighting all the tasks by owners, start-end time, duration, and dependencies.
Post project completion, ensure that the project team transitions to the application support team. Walk application support team through any pending open items and issues.
Perform other duties (including but not limited to multiple projects) as assigned.

Qualifications:

8-10 years of progressive experience scoping and managing functional and infrastructure projects within a Consulting or Media or Entertainment firm in a Program/Project Manager role.
Skilled at leading project teams in an Agile and Waterfall workflow environment.
Experience creating and managing project budget; including creating a monthly forecast, weekly tracking of the project spend, comparing the forecast with the actual spend to mitigate any cost over-run risk.
CSM and PMP Certification is a plus.
Skilled at leading project teams in either an Agile or Waterfall workflow environment.
Proficiency in MS Project creating project plans with tasks and activities going up to 7 levels and 1000+ lines using advanced constraints and dependencies.
Experience writing Macros and complex formulas in MS Excel, creating 3D charts, and PowerPoint decks for Executive Reporting.
Experience with Jira or other issue tracking tools to groom the backlog, manage development user stories, bugs, fixes, and test results.
Experience in managing primary and secondary data center move to Microsoft Azure or AWS cloud.
Workday or other HRIS knowledge is preferred.
Salesforce or other CRM and Marketing application knowledge is preferred.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations or other ERP knowledge is preferred.
Experience creating Logical Data Model, process flows/maps using DrawIO, MS Visio, or other design tools.
Experience working with and managing offshore/near-shore resources.
Ability to do Fit-Gap analysis by comparing business requirements with the system's capabilities.
Experience working with business stakeholders at all levels of management to understand business needs, gather requirements (functional and technical) and convert those requirements into Project Charter, Business Requirements Document (BRD) Functional Requirement Specifications (FRS), and user stories.
Strong background and experience in organizing User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and ability to develop test plan templates and help coordinate resolution of issues found during manual and/or automated testing.
Experience in developing training plans and coordinating training for business users.
Excellent relationship-building and people skills, with an ability to develop strong and trustworthy relationships across multiple teams and end-users.
Strong organizational and problem-solving skills, even in ambiguous environments, as well as an attention to detail.
A calm, measured approach to the high volume of work.
Effective presentation, written and verbal communication, and negotiation skills when dealing directly with clients.
Logical thinking and creative problem-solving ability.
Possesses a personal affinity for the products of The Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Business (Marketing, Product Management, etc.) or equivalent work experience.

The Company is a mandatory vaccination employer for COVID-19 and its variants. The Company requires that its employees be fully vaccinated as of their start date. If you require a medical or religious accommodation we will engage in the interactive process with you. Proof of vaccination will be required prior to start. If we make you an offer and you are not yet vaccinated, we will accommodate a delay in start date. The Company may also mandate that its employees receive vaccine boosters, and all accommodation laws will be followed.

Thank you for your interest in joining our team at the Los Angeles Times! We look forward to reviewing your application.