Senior Project Manager (54559)

Who We Are

The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) is a self-sustaining nonprofit enterprise. Founded to help bridge the gap between policy and practice, our mission is to enable people and the planet to meet the pace of change by expanding access to new technologies that power more sustainable and equitable outcomes.

We are a fully remote team of award-winning professionals with decades of applied expertise and end-to-end GIS capabilities. By embracing whole-system thinking and state-of-the-art technology, we enable partners across public, private, and nonprofit sectors to tackle complex, real-world challenges—like housing affordability, ecosystem conservation, water management, and sustainable infrastructure—with greater clarity.

Our work liberates and connects key information, creates nuanced pictures of complex situations, and makes land, water, and social data easier to use, understand, and act on. We use tools like satellite data and artificial intelligence to deliver insights for impact.

At CGS, we believe that technology can be a tool for positive change. We are dedicated to building a diverse team that represents the communities and systems we live and work in. If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every listed qualification, we encourage you to apply. We value potential, curiosity, and lived experiences, and know a more inclusive team makes us a stronger organization.

About the Lincoln Institute

CGS was established in 2020 at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, the Lincoln Institute integrates theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide and has office locations in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Washington, DC; Phoenix, Arizona; and Beijing, China.

Position Overview:

The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) is seeking a Senior Project Manager to coordinate the successful delivery of geospatial, data, AI, and environmental projects for public, private, nonprofit, and philanthropic partners.

Reporting to the Associate Director of Solutions, the Senior Project Manager will translate contracts and scopes of work into practical plans, track schedules and budgets, coordinate technical teams, manage client communications, and help identify and resolve risks before they affect delivery. The role will lead project planning, financial and contractual management, client engagement, risk management, and coordination of cross-functional technical teams, often across multiple organizations, disciplines, and workstreams.

The Senior Project Manager will exercise substantial independent judgment to manage complex project scope, schedules, budgets, resources, dependencies, and client expectations and will be responsible to anticipate and resolve complex client delivery challenges before they affect project outcomes. The position will regularly work with senior client stakeholders, technical leads, organizational leadership, subcontractors, and external partners.

In addition to managing assigned projects, the Senior Project Manager will help strengthen CGS's organization-wide project delivery practices by mentoring staff, developing tools and standards, identifying systemic delivery risks, and improving how CGS manages increasingly larger and more complex client engagements.

What You Will Do:

Complex Project Delivery

• Lead multiple complex geospatial, data, AI, software, or environmental projects from contract execution and kickoff through delivery, acceptance, and closeout.
• Develop and own integrated project-management plans translating contracts, technical approaches, and scopes of work into schedules, workstreams, milestones, deliverables, dependencies, resource plans, decision points, and acceptance criteria.
• Lead delivery across multidisciplinary teams that may include geospatial analysts, data scientists, software engineers, environmental scientists, product specialists, subcontractors, and external partners.
• Exercise independent judgment to resolve project-level issues involving priorities, staffing, sequencing, technical dependencies, client expectations, and competing contractual requirements.
• Maintain project plans, meeting notes, decision logs, action registers, and team coordination using Monday.com or comparable tools.
• Coordinate staffing and work-sequencing with technical staff and organizational managers.
• Track deliverable status and ensure reviews, approvals, and client submissions occur on time.

Client and Stakeholder Responsibilities

• Serve as a primary day-to-day lead and trusted advisor for assigned clients and partners, including senior government, nonprofit, philanthropic, and private-sector stakeholders.
• Lead client meetings, executive-level project updates, planning sessions, reviews, and difficult conversations concerning scope, schedule, performance, risk, or changing priorities.
• Set and manage expectations regarding scope, schedule, roles, dependencies, data needs, and technical constraints.
• Build trusted client relationships and identify concerns or opportunities that should be elevated to others.
• Identify follow-on opportunities, changing client needs, and potential extensions of work and communicate them to the appropriate parties.
• Represent CGS professionally in multi-organization project teams, steering groups, and other external forums.

Budget, Scope, and Risk Management

• Own project-level financial management for assigned engagements, including budgets, burn rates, labor plans, subcontractor costs, forecasts, invoicing inputs, and estimates to complete.
• Identify scope changes, delivery risks, resource constraints, and unresolved decisions early and handle timely mitigation.
• Lead change-management processes when client requirements or project assumptions change, including documenting impacts and supporting amendments, modifications, or revised scopes.
• Support management of federally funded contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, and subawards, including coordination of applicable reporting and compliance requirements.
• Maintain clear documentation to support financial oversight, contractual accountability, audits, and organizational decision-making.

Team Leadership and Organizational Project Management

• Coach and mentor project managers, technical leads, and other staff in project planning, client management, financial management, risk identification, and delivery practices.
• Create and maintain clear operating rhythms for project teams, including planning sessions, standups, reviews, retrospectives, risk reviews, and executive status reporting, without relying on direct supervisory authority, to establish clarity around project responsibilities, priorities, deadlines, and decision-making.
• Promote consistent use of CGS project-management practices while adapting the level of process to the needs of each project.
• Analyze lessons across projects and recommend changes that improve delivery predictability, financial performance, client experience, and organizational scalability.