Program Manager OPER (Operations)-Maryland Department Health (MDH)

Job Description:

The Program Manager serves as the single point of contact for the State regarding day-to-day IT project operations. Responsibilities shall include overall project governance, communications with executives, planning, budgeting, execution, monitoring, control, quality assurance, and implementing course corrections as needed.

The Program Manager is responsible for performing the following:

·        Managing day-to-day project activities, milestones, and system integrator deliverables across the software implementation lifecycle

·        Identifying issues and risks including Identifying platform-specific issues and risks (including business workflow disruptions, data integration bottlenecks, and system downtime) and recommending possible issue and risk mitigation strategies;

·        Facilitating State agency and Contractor discussions/meetings;

·        Ensuring that performance is within scope, consistent with requirements, and delivered on time and within budget;

·        Providing solutions to improve efficiency (e.g., reduce costs while maintaining or improving operational workflows and user adoption levels);

·        Documenting and delivering project management-related artifacts.

 Additional Duties may include:

·        Organizes, directs, and coordinates the planning and production of all Contract activities, projects, and support activities, including those of subcontractors.

·        Oversees the development of or develops work breakdown structures, charts, tables, graphs, major milestone calendars, and diagrams to assist in analyzing problems and making recommendations.

·        Develops and implement appropriate procedures and reporting for the implementation, consistent with the overall program

·        Leads data migration and system integration strategies, ensuring legacy data is accurately and securely mapped into the new system and connected with adjacent State systems as required

·        Client relationship and expectation management in conjunction with the Organizational Change Management lead (when applicable) to mitigate user resistance and foster high adoption rates of the new solutions.

·        Vendor performance management, acting as the primary liaison with primary software vendors and implementation partners to manage scope, platform enhancements, and ticket escalation

·        Contribute to setting the required project pace by defining corresponding project and individual responsibilities, objectives, tasks, schedules, and outputs

·        Coordinates directly with State oversight managers, Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) teams, and quality assurance auditors; prepares and submits specialized project health artifacts, risk logs, and compliance reports as requested for Major IT Development Projects (MITDPs)

·        Directly contributes to and shares the responsibility for the project performance by planning, monitoring, and adjusting project resources (people, budget, material, time)

·        Manage project risks and issues: root cause analysis, implementation of corrective/preventive actions, compliance with PMI methodology, and continual process improvement efforts 

Education:

·        This position requires a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, or a related discipline.

·        Candidates must possess a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

General Experience:

·        The candidate must have at least ten (10) years of experience in project management.

·        A minimum of 2 years of healthcare or public sector technology project management experience (direct Salesforce or CRM implementation experience strongly preferred).

·        Strong leadership aptitude to foster a positive work environment that considers the dynamics of physical, social, psychological, and environmental factors

·        Demonstrated problem-solving and customer service skills

·        Experience conducting meetings, interviews, and making presentations

·        Specific experience in evaluating quality assurance /quality control testing, operational validation, and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) efforts.

·        Expertise in steering enterprise-wide digital transformation and modernization programs that improve operational efficiency, reduce technical debt, and align IT infrastructure with long-term business goals.

 Specialized Experience:

·        The proposed candidate must demonstrate at least eight (8) years of experience managing complex IT development projects.

·        This individual must also have experience in a leadership role for at least three (3) successful projects with an organizational change management component that involve working with stakeholder groups across the organization.

·        The candidate must possess at least five (5) years of experience using PMI''s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) methodologies and artifacts.

·        Must be capable of negotiating and making binding decisions for the Master Contractor.

Preferred Experience

·        Previous experience working with State Government IT development projects is a plus

·        Proven track record of managing large-scale Salesforce implementations, CRM rollouts, or complex enterprise-level cloud technology platform deployments is a significant plus.

·        Direct project experience managing implementations to modernize healthcare delivery, workforce recruitment, and regulatory processes by replacing outdated manual systems with a unified, cloud-based Salesforce CRM.

·        Familiarity with state government operational workflows, public sector reporting, and related agency/state billing and compliance requirements (Highly Preferred).