What are the responsibilities and job description for the CONTRACT TO HIRE: Senior Digital Experience Project Manager position at Vanguard Charitable?
***This is a contract to hire position***
Position
Senior Project Manager - IT
Reports to
Head of AI Strategies and Digital Experience
Summary
The Senior Project Manager serves as an internal project lead for large-scale or complex initiatives across the AI and Digital Experience portfolios. This role partners with product, UX, technology, and business stakeholders to shape and deliver the program roadmaps, applying disciplined project management and Agile practices from scoping through close-out. The Senior Project Manager ensures clear plans, dependencies, and communications are in place, and that vendor partners are effectively selected, onboarded, and managed to deliver business outcomes.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Lead planning and delivery of multiple AI and Digital Experience initiatives in parallel; define scope, milestones, tasks, resources, and dependencies across teams.
- Operationalize the AI & Digital Experience roadmap by sequencing work, coordinating cross-team capacity, and managing interdependencies with Product, UX, Engineering, Data/Analytics, Security, Compliance, and Legal.
- Own core project management artifacts (charters, integrated schedules, budgets, RAID logs, status reporting) and maintain transparency to sponsors and stakeholders.
- Facilitate Agile practices (e.g., sprint planning, reviews/demos, retrospectives) and align cadence across teams and vendors; ensure readiness for releases and launches.
- Coordinate change management and communications (stakeholder analysis, impact assessment, training and support plans) in partnership with Product, Change, and Communications teams.
- Drive vendor management end-to-end: support business cases and RFPs, evaluate solutions, coordinate SOWs/MSAs with Procurement and Legal, onboard vendors, manage deliverables and SLAs, and track invoices and burn-down.
- Identify, escalate, and resolve risks and issues quickly; propose mitigation options and decision paths; maintain decision logs and follow-through.
- Ensure solution quality through test planning coordination, UAT readiness, and deployment checklists; verify post-launch stabilization and benefits realization.
- Continuously improve ways of working by standardizing templates, playbooks, and KPIs across projects; coach teams on project management best practices.
- Ensure adherence to organizational policies, information security, privacy, and responsible AI governance standards; align with budgeting and procurement processes.
- Lead or participate in special projects and perform other duties as assigned.
Qualifications
- Undergraduate degree in a related field or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 5 years of professional experience with at least 3 years leading technology or product delivery projects; experience with AI/ML-enabled products and/or digital experience initiatives a plus.
- Proven track record managing third-party/SaaS implementations and vendor relationships (selection, contracting, onboarding, delivery oversight, SLA management).
- Demonstrated experience in Agile environments (Scrum/Kanban); proficiency with Jira (or similar) and Microsoft 365 collaboration tools.
- Excellent interpersonal, communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills; able to influence across levels and functions.
- Highly organized and detail-oriented; able to manage multiple concurrent efforts, competing priorities, and deadlines.
- Project Management and/or Agile certifications (e.g., PMP, CSM, SAFe) are a plus.
***Vanguard Charitable does not offer sponsorships at this time. This is a hybrid role with a 2 day/week onsite requirement***