Senior IT Project Manager

Company Description

By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive.

Why join Harvard University Central Administration?

Harvard University's Central Administration (CADM) is a 5,000+ employee organization that supports the university's overall excellence by understanding and serving the needs of its schools, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and surrounding communities. Through dynamic and collaborative partnerships, CADM provides high-quality and efficient services to the schools to help them achieve their goals.

Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT) is a community of Information Technology professionals committed to understanding our users and devoted to making it easier for faculty, students, and staff to teach, research, learn, and work through the effective use of information technology.  We are recruiting an IT workforce that has both breadth in their ability to collaborate and innovate across disciplines – and depth in specific areas of expertise.  HUIT offers opportunities for IT professionals to learn and work in a unique technology landscape and service-focused environment.  If you are a technically proficient, nimble, user-focused and accountable IT professional who also connects with the importance of collaborating well in a team environment we are looking for you!  

More About HUIT: 

Our Mission: huit.harvard.edu/about 

We empower the Harvard community with essential and transformative technologies to advance education, knowledge, and discovery. 

HUIT’s core values are:  

• Human-centered  
• University-focused 
• Innovation-driven 
• Team-oriented 

IT Academy (designed for IT Staff): 

HUIT’s IT Academy aims to enable each IT staff person to grow professionally and become a trusted partner to her or his team. The IT Academy is built on the belief that every IT staff member across the University (including technology employees at each school and campus) can grow in her or his area of expertise as well as building strong people and project management skills. Learn more here: https://itacademy.harvard.edu/.

Job Description

The Senior Project Manager leads project execution and supports business operations for a defined subset of Technology Partner Services, including Platform Services. 

This role ensures that services and initiatives within this portfolio are well-managed and operationally disciplined. The Senior PM partners closely with the Associate Director of Operational Excellence, service owners, and senior leaders to translate priorities into executable plans, track delivery, manage risk, and improve operational consistency. 

This role is primarily execution-focused, providing structure, coordination, and operational rigor that enables senior leaders to focus on strategy and service ownership.

Job-Specific Responsibilities:

Project and Portfolio Management

Manage a portfolio of initiatives and maintain visibility into:

• Project status and milestones
• Dependencies and risks
• Resource and capacity constraints
• Support governance processes by:
  • Preparing status reporting
  • Tracking decisions and follow-ups
  • Escalating risks and issues appropriately
  • Help ensure initiatives deliver against agreed scope, timeline, and outcomes

Operational Discipline & Process Improvement

Support consistent operational practices across the assigned portfolio.

• Assist in developing, maintaining, and operationalizing:
  • Standard operating processes
  • Project and initiative playbooks
  • Documentation and reporting standards
  • Participate in post-incident and retrospective reviews as appropriate, helping track follow-up actions and improvements.
  • Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, clarity, and coordination.

Stakeholder Coordination & Communication

Serve as a coordination point between service owners, architects, project teams, and central partners.

• Support preparation of materials for leadership, governance forums, and stakeholder updates.
• Help ensure information flows clearly and consistently across teams.
• Build effective working relationships with peers across Infrastructure and HUIT.

Business Operations & Financial Support

Support Associate Director in maintaining well-managed business operations for the assigned portfolio, including:

• Budget planning and tracking
• Cost transparency and reporting
• Partner with AD, service owners, and finance teams to ensure:
  • Analysis and clear documentation of assumptions and tradeoffs
  • Prepare operational and financial materials for leadership review. 
  • Responsible contract and Vendor Management, including but not limited to tracking renewals dates and analyzing contracts 

Ownership

• Serve as an escalation point for service risks and user-impacting incidents.
• Responsible for defined roadmap and strategy to meet expectations for availability, performance, security, compliance, and usability.

Service Delivery and Performance Management

• Responsible to define and maintain clear service definitions including scope, ownership, dependencies, and escalation paths.
• Establish and monitor service performance and risk indicators.
• Use service data to drive prioritization, surface risk, and communicate transparently with leadership and stakeholders.
• Ensure services remain reliable during periods of vendor-driven, compliance-driven, and institutionally required change.
• Manage and balance both discretionary (project) and operations (including tickets) workloads.

Security, Process Compliance, and Risk Coordination

• Responsible to define and maintain clear security, compliance, and risk management practices.
• Partner closely with appropriate teams to:
  • Implement user protections and infrastructure controls.
  • Align services with identity lifecycle and security strategies. 
• Ensure compliance controls are operationally feasible, auditable, and clearly communicated.
• Surface and manage tradeoffs between usability, security, and compliance.

Vendor Strategy, Contract Management, and Fiscal Stewardship

• Responsible to define and maintain vendor relationships, including:
  • Providing key input to contract renewals, negotiations, and third-party support evaluations with HUIT VMO.
  • Contributing to complex pricing, licensing, and storage models in partnership with finance and procurement.
  • Contributing to cost recovery operations to ensure financial stability.
• Ensure services operate sustainably within institutional budgetary constraints.

User Experience, Adoption, and Change Management 

• Responsible for all appropriate service changes, including: 
  • Leading user-visible change for the service, balancing innovation with stability. 
  • Ensuring major changes are well-coordinated, clearly communicated to users and schools, and implemented with appropriate support and documentation. 
  • Reducing friction between central services and distributed IT organizations. 

Leadership and People Management 

• Responsible for team health and efficacy, including: 
  • Actively managing performance, addressing issues early, and supporting professional growth. 
  • Building leadership and resilience in a dependency-heavy service environment. 
  • Developing and improving business processes to optimize team efficiencies. 
  • Demonstrating a collaborative, positive, empathetic, and growth mindset. 

Cross-Functional & Enterprise Partnership 

• Partner closely with appropriate teams including, but not limited to: 
  • Information Security and Data Privacy (ISDP) teams.
  • Identity & Access Management for identity, provisioning, and access governance. 
  • Platform Services for hosting, automation, and operational dependencies. 
  • Schools and distributed IT leaders across a federated environment.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

Basic Qualifications are the minimum threshold a candidate must meet in order to be considered for this role.

• Minimum of seven years’ post-secondary education or relevant work experience

Additional Qualifications and Skills:

The following qualifications are strongly preferred. If you meet some, but not all, you are still encouraged to apply; we value employees with a willingness to learn.

• 10+ years of progressive IT leadership experience, including service management, operations, or program/portfolio management. 
• Minimum 5 years at a senior management or director level with demonstrated responsibility for large-scale service portfolios. 
• Proven ability to manage budgets, resources, and operational performance across multiple service domains. 
• Strong knowledge of ITIL or equivalent service management frameworks.
• Experience developing and reporting on service performance metrics and executive dashboards.
• Demonstrated ability to drive operational excellence and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Exceptional communication, stakeholder engagement, and leadership skills with the ability to influence across diverse groups.
• Experience in higher education IT environments strongly preferred. 
• Bachelor's degree, Business Administration, or related field (or equivalent work experience).

Certificates and Licenses:

• Completion of Harvard IT Academy Project Management Foundations course (or external equivalent) preferred
• PMP or other relevant certification and experience preferred, e.g., Scrum Master

Additional Information

• Working Conditions: Onstie work is performed in an office setting
• Visa Sponsorship Information: Harvard University is unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position
• Hybrid - Onsite as needed with advance notice
• Pre-Employment Screening: Identity
• Other Information:
  Please provide a cover letter and resume as one document with your application. 
  This position has an 180-day orientation and review period.

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Work Format Details

This position has been determined by school or unit leaders that some of the duties and responsibilities can be effectively performed at a non-Harvard location. The work schedule and location will be set by the department at its discretion and based upon operational needs. When not working at a Harvard or Harvard-designated location, employees in hybrid positions must work in a Harvard registered state in compliance with the University’s Policy on Employment Outside of Massachusetts. Additional details will be discussed during the interview process. Certain visa types and funding sources may limit work location. Individuals must meet work location sponsorship requirements prior to employment.

Salary Grade and Ranges

This position is salary grade level 059. Please visit  Harvard's Salary Ranges  to view the corresponding salary range and related information. 

Benefits

Harvard offers a comprehensive benefits package that is designed to support a healthy work-life balance and your physical, mental and financial wellbeing. Because here, you are what matters. Our benefits include, but are not limited to: 

• Generous paid time off including parental leave 
• Medical, dental, and vision health insurance coverage starting on day one 
• Retirement plans with university contributions 
• Wellbeing and mental health resources 
• Support for families and caregivers 
• Professional development opportunities including tuition assistance and reimbursement 
• Commuter benefits, discounts and campus perks 

Learn more about these and additional benefits on our Benefits & Wellbeing Page. 

EEO/Non-Discrimination Commitment Statement

Harvard University is committed to equal opportunity and non-discrimination. We seek talent from all parts of society and the world, and we strive to ensure everyone at Harvard thrives. Our differences help our community advance Harvard's academic purposes.

Harvard has an equal employment opportunity policy that outlines our commitment to prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, religion, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law or identified in the university's non-discrimination policy. Harvard's equal employment opportunity policy and non-discrimination policy help all community members participate fully in work and campus life free from harassment and discrimination.