Senior ERP Project Manager - Pasadena, CA location ONLY

Senior Project Manager

Temporary

Govt Organization at CA – Systems Division, Project Management Office

Reports To: Director, Project Management Office

Location: Pasadena, CA (Hybrid)

Engagement: Temporary / Contract

Position Overview

Our Govt client is seeking an experienced, hands-on Senior Project Manager to join the Project Management Office (PMO) on a temporary project-based engagement. Reporting to the Director of the PMO, this role will lead and deliver complex, enterprise-scale technology initiatives that directly support Client’s mission to provide retirement, disability, and death benefits to over 200,000 LA County members and beneficiaries.

The Senior Project Manager will own end-to-end delivery of two strategic, high-visibility programs: (1) the implementation of a modern Call Center solution for the Member Services organization, with AI integration (chatbot), and (2) the replacement of the legacy Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains financial system with a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform. The successful candidate will partner with executive sponsors, business stakeholders, IT leadership, vendors, and external system integrators to drive these programs from initiation through stabilization and transition to operations.

This is a hands-on, working leader role — not a status-reporting role. We are looking for a delivery-focused professional who is comfortable rolling up their sleeves, getting into the details, and doing the work alongside the team when the situation calls for it. The ideal candidate is proactive by nature, anticipates obstacles before they become issues, takes personal initiative to resolve problems, and is willing to step in and remove roadblocks. They are equally comfortable facilitating an executive steering committee in the morning and personally drafting requirements, validating data mappings, or running a working session with vendors in the afternoon.

Key Responsibilities

Program & Project Leadership

•        Lead the full project lifecycle (initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, closure) for assigned enterprise programs, including the Call Center modernization and ERP replacement initiatives.

•        Develop and maintain project charters, integrated project schedules, resource plans, budgets, risk plan, issues log, and communication plans, etc.

•        Apply appropriate delivery methodology based on the nature of each workstream, vendor approach, and organizational readiness.

•        Take personal ownership of delivery outcomes; proactively anticipate project hurdles, risks, and schedule slippage, and intervene early to keep work moving rather than escalating after the fact.

Hands-On Delivery & Business Analysis

•        Roll up sleeves and contribute directly to the work when needed — eliciting and documenting business requirements, facilitating process-mapping and gap-analysis sessions, validating user stories, reviewing data migration mappings, and supporting test planning and UAT coordination.

•        Continuously assess the strengths, capacity, and skill coverage of assigned project team members and vendor staff; identify gaps and step in personally to fill them until the right resource is in place or the gap is closed.

•        Take initiative to solve problems as they surface — diagnose root causes, propose options, make decisions within delegated authority, and drive issues to closure.

Stakeholder & Vendor Management

•        Serve as the single point of accountability for program delivery; manage executive steering committees, prepare board-ready and executive-level status reports, and escalate decisions with clear options and recommendations.

•        Actively remove roadblocks and barriers for the project team — chase down decisions, unblock dependencies across divisions, broker compromises between stakeholders, and intervene when progress stalls.

•        Manage SaaS vendors, system integrators, and professional services partners against contracted scope, milestones, deliverables, and SLAs; lead change order negotiations and contract compliance reviews in partnership with Procurement and Legal.

•        Facilitate cross-functional collaboration across Systems, Member Services, Financial Accounting Services, Budgeting, Human Resources, Internal Audit, Information Security, and other client  divisions.

Procurement & Implementation Oversight

•        Partner with Procurement and Legal to support RFP development, vendor evaluation, demonstrations, scoring, and contract negotiation for Call Center and ERP solutions.

•        Oversee solution design, configuration, data migration (including conversion from Great Plains), integrations, testing, training, cutover planning, and hypercare.

•        Coordinate organizational change management activities, including stakeholder engagement, communications, training delivery, and adoption tracking.

Governance, Risk & Financial Stewardship

•        Operate within Client’s IT governance framework; ensure adherence to PMO standards, security policies, procurement rules, and applicable public-sector requirements.

•        Manage program budgets, forecast variances, track actuals against plan, and provide transparent financial reporting to executive sponsors.

•        Proactively identify, quantify, and mitigate risks before they impact delivery; treat early-warning signals as action triggers, not status updates, and document decisions for audit traceability.

PMO Contribution

•        Contribute to the maturation of Client’s  PMO practices, including templates, tooling, reporting cadences, and project intake/prioritization processes.

•        Mentor project coordinators, business analysts, and junior project managers assigned to the workstreams — coach them on anticipating problems, owning outcomes, and unblocking their own work.

Minimum Qualifications

•        Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Administration, Public Administration, Finance, or a related field. Equivalent additional professional experience may be considered in lieu of the degree.

•        Minimum of 8 years of progressive project management experience, including at least 5 years leading enterprise-scale IT implementations with budgets of $5M and multi-disciplinary teams of 15 or more.

•        Demonstrated experience delivering at least one full-lifecycle ERP implementation or one full-lifecycle Contact Center / Call Center platform implementation.

•        Demonstrated hands-on business analysis capability — able to personally elicit requirements, document business processes, perform gap analysis, and bridge the gap between business stakeholders and technical teams when a dedicated BA is not available.

•        Proven ability to anticipate project risks and proactively remove roadblocks, demonstrated through specific examples of recovering at-risk projects, unblocking stalled workstreams, or stepping in to fill team skill gaps.

•        Demonstrated proficiency with enterprise project management tooling (e.g., Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Azure DevOps, Jira, ServiceNow SPM, Planview, or equivalent).

•        Strong written and verbal communication skills, with proven ability to translate technical concepts for executive and non-technical audiences.

•        Ability to work onsite at Client's offices in Pasadena on a hybrid schedule.

Preferred Qualifications

•        Master's degree in a related field (MBA, MPA, MS in Information Systems, or similar).

•        Direct experience delivering technology programs for a public pension system, government agency, public-sector / heavily regulated organization, or financial institution.

•        Prior experience replacing or migrating off legacy financial system to a modern cloud ERP, including general ledger conversion, chart-of-accounts redesign, and integration with downstream financial and pension administration systems.

•        Experience implementing omnichannel contact center capabilities (voice, email, chat, SMS, callback, AI/IVR, workforce management, quality management, and CRM integration) for member-facing or constituent-facing organizations.

•        Prior experience as a Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, or Functional Lead earlier in career, providing the hands-on analytical depth to personally cover BA gaps when they arise on the project team.

•        Additional certifications such as PgMP, PMI-ACP, CBAP, Certified Scrum Master (CSM/CSP), SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) / SAFe Agilist, Prosci Change Management, ITIL v4, or Lean Six Sigma.

•        Demonstrated success leading organizational change management for large user populations, including training strategy, communication planning, and adoption measurement.

A track record of operating as a player-coach — equally credible leading from the front of the room and contributing as an individual hands-on practitioner when the team needs it.