Job Title
Senior Project Manager, TDS
Job Description Summary
The Senior Project Manager is accountable for the successful delivery of complex, high-risk, and high-visibility initiatives. This role operates with a high degree of autonomy and judgment, anticipating delivery risks and executive decision needs before escalation is required.
Senior Project Managers are trusted delivery leaders who engage confidently with sponsors, steering committees, and executives (VP and C-suite). They consistently translate complexity into clear options, guide executive decision-making, and model strong delivery and leadership behaviors across the PMO. Senior Project Managers maintain executive trust through transparent delivery health reporting, credible financial forecasts, and early identification of risks and trade-offs.
Job Description
Delivery Leadership
- Lead end-to-end delivery of complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives across scope, schedule, budget, risk, and quality.
- Anticipate delivery risks, dependencies, and constraints beyond what is explicitly documented.
- Proactively identify and address issues before executive escalation is required.
- Drive disciplined execution while adapting approaches based on project complexity and business context.
- Own project financial management, including: Budget planning, Forecasting, Variance analysis and Identification of cost risks and trade-off options
- Ensure formal project closeout, transition to operations, and lessons learned capture.
Governance & Decision Readiness
- Operate with PMO standards and governance as baseline expectations.
- Prepare executive-ready deliverables that anticipate leadership questions and decision friction.
- Present clear options, trade-offs, impacts, and recommendations to sponsors and steering committees.
- Engage governance forums proactively rather than reactively.
- Provide accurate financial insights and recommendations to support executive decision-making.
- Escalate material issues through appropriate channels with complete context and recommended options.
Executive & Stakeholder Engagement
- Serve as the primary delivery interface with senior leaders, including CIOs, VPs, and CXOs.
- Tailor communications effectively for executive audiences.
- Build and maintain strong sponsor relationships through transparency and credibility.
- Navigate competing stakeholder priorities with maturity and emotional intelligence.
Vendor & Partner Leadership
- Lead vendor and partner delivery activities.
- Hold implementation partners accountable for: Contractual commitments, Delivery milestones and Quality expectations
- Identify vendor risks early and recommend corrective actions.
- Ensure vendor activities align with overall project goals and governance standards.
PMO Influence & Mentorship
- Model mature delivery leadership and professional behaviors for Project Managers and Coordinators.
- Mentor PMs through influence, example, and informal coaching.
- Share lessons learned and delivery insights to strengthen PMO practices.
- Contribute to continuous improvement of Delivery processes, Governance practices and PMO standards
Responsibilities may vary within the range of tasks and activities described.
Decision Authority & Escalation
- Full authority for project-level delivery decisions, prioritization, and risk mitigation.
- Responsible for preparing and presenting decision-ready recommendations to sponsors and steering committees.
- Escalates cross-project, systemic, or portfolio-level risks to the Portfolio Manager.
- Operates as a trusted advisor within executive decision forums.
Financials & Budget
- Provide oversight and guidance on project financials for assigned initiatives.
- Identify financial risks and trends as visibility improves.
- Partner with Project Managers to improve budget tracking, forecasting practices and financial narratives
- Support effective communication of financial risks and trade-offs to senior leaders.
- Contribute to increased financial maturity through coaching, standardization, and lessons learned.
Success Measures
The successful Senior Project Manager will demonstrate:
- Predictable delivery of complex initiatives with minimal surprises.
- Executive confidence and trust in delivery leadership.
- Early identification and mitigation of risks and dependencies.
- High-quality escalation materials that enable efficient decision-making.
- Positive influence on PMO delivery maturity and team capability.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Information Systems, or a related field.
- Master's degree or MBA preferred.
- 8+ years of progressive project management experience, including complex enterprise-level initiatives.
- PMP, Scrum Master, or similar project management certification strongly preferred.
- Ability to travel 10% or less as needed.
Knowledge & Experience
- Experience leading complex, multi-system initiatives involving data platforms, integrations and enterprise applications
- Ability to coordinate effectively across technical and business teams without serving as the functional subject matter expert.
- Proven ownership of project financials, including budget planning, forecasting, variance management and financial reporting
- Strong proficiency with Smartsheet as a primary planning and tracking tool.
- Experience with project management platforms such as Microsoft Project, Jira, Asana and Azure DevOps.
- Understanding of SDLC, Agile methodologies and traditional predictive project management approaches.
- Working knowledge of: data governance concepts, financial planning processes and system optimization practices.
- Demonstrated success managing distributed, cross-functional teams.
- Highly organized and adaptable with the ability to prioritize effectively, manage competing demands, and perform under pressure.
Skills & Personal Qualities
Leadership & Influence
- Demonstrated emotional intelligence and the ability to adapt communication styles based on audience and situation.
- Strong leadership presence with the ability to influence outcomes without formal authority.
- Proven ability to collaborate effectively across organizational boundaries.
- Exceptional verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex topics clearly to technical terms, business stakeholders, vendors and executive leadership
- Strong written communication skills, including executive status reporting, steering committe materials, decision ready presentations.
- Sound judgment, especially in ambiguous or high-pressure situations.
- Strong sense of ownership and accountability for project outcomes.
- Ability to establish, manage, and recalibrate priorities to meet aggressive timelines.
- Business-oriented mindset with the ability to understand and communicate the purpose and value of initiatives.
- High attention to detail while maintaining focus on strategic objectives and outcomes.
- Strong time management and organizational skills.
- Ability to manage multiple competing priorities simultaneously.
- Flexibility to adjust working hours during critical project phases, stakeholder engagements, or executive reviews.
- Acts as a role model for delivery discipline, professional behavior, leadership excellence, PMO best practices.
Cushman & Wakefield also provides eligible employees with an opportunity to enroll in a variety of benefit programs, generally including health, vision, and dental insurance, flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, retirement savings plans, life, and disability insurance programs, and paid and unpaid time away from work. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, Cushman and Wakefield provide eligible employees with competitive pay, which may vary depending on eligibility factors such as geographic location, date of hire, total hours worked, job type, business line, and applicability of collective bargaining agreements.
The compensation that will be offered to the successful candidate will depend on factors such as whether the position is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, the geographic area in which the work will be performed, market pay rates in that area, and the candidate’s experience and qualifications.
The company will not pay less than minimum wage for this role.
The compensation for the position is: $ 103,955.00 - $122,300.00Cushman & Wakefield is an Equal Opportunity employer to all protected groups, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. Discrimination of any type will not be tolerated.
In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA), if you have a disability and would like to request an accommodation in order to apply for a position at Cushman & Wakefield, please call the ADA line at 1-888-365-5406 or email Accommodations@cushwake.com. Please refer to the job title and job location when you contact us.
INCO: “Cushman & Wakefield”
