Position: Senior Principal Program / Project Manager
Experience: 12+ Years
Location: Rancho Cordova (CA) (Candidate must be in PST OR MST Zone)
Employment Type: Contract – W2 Only
Job Description
Primary skills: Individual reporting, Expert/principal, Project governance (RACI) / PM, Partners/IT, Tracking deadlines / meetings / managing groups
We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Principal Program / Project Manager to serve as the execution partner for a complex SmartRecruiters-to-Workday HR systems implementation. Reporting to the Head of Talent Acquisition, this person will translate strategy into disciplined execution while partnering across TA Operations, TA Delivery, HRIT, HR Operations, IT, and the SmartRecruiters implementation team. The role will develop and maintain business and functional requirements, coordinate interfaces and dependencies, establish governance, and keep the implementation aligned on milestones, budget, decisions, actions, risks, and deliverables.
The successful candidate must be a classically trained, highly seasoned program and project management practitioner who can plug in immediately with minimal onboarding. Direct experience delivering an HR systems implementation of comparable magnitude—specifically involving SmartRecruiters and Workday—is required. This person will create the operating structure, facilitate cross-functional execution, and drive follow-through while the Head of Talent Acquisition sets strategy with TA Operations, TA Delivery, and IT.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Execution Partnership
· Serve as the primary execution partner to the Head of Talent Acquisition for the SmartRecruiters-to-Workday implementation.
· Translate the strategic direction set by the Head of Talent Acquisition with TA Operations, TA Delivery, and IT into executable workplans, measurable milestones, clear ownership, and decision-ready recommendations.
· Interface between the SmartRecruiters implementation team and internal Talent Acquisition, HRIT, HR Operations, IT, and other stakeholders to coordinate delivery and resolve cross-functional gaps.
· Create execution leverage by maintaining operational discipline, surfacing risks early, and driving timely follow-through.
Requirements, Integration, and Governance
· Lead the development, validation, traceability, and maintenance of business, functional, data, integration, reporting, security, and operational requirements.
· Coordinate requirements and interface decisions across SmartRecruiters, Workday, the implementation team, Talent Acquisition, HRIT, HR Operations, IT, and relevant business stakeholders.
· Establish and manage the governance model, meeting architecture, scheduling cadence, stakeholder forums, and escalation paths.
· Build and maintain responsibility and decision matrices that clarify owners, approvers, contributors, decision rights, dependencies, and required actions.
Integrated Planning, Milestones, and Execution
· Develop and maintain the integrated implementation plan, detailed schedules, milestone tracker, budget tracker, deliverable tracker, dependency map, required-action tracker, and critical path.
· Coordinate design, configuration, integration, data, testing, change-readiness, deployment, and post-launch workstreams across SmartRecruiters and Workday.
· Monitor progress against commitments, identify schedule, scope, resource, or budget risks, and drive practical mitigation and recovery plans.
· Maintain a single, accurate view of status, upcoming milestones, actions, decisions required, dependencies, budget position, and areas needing leadership intervention.
Decision, Action, Risk, and Issue Management
· Own the decision matrix and register, action-required tracker, risk register, issue log, assumptions log, change-control log, and escalation tracker.
· Structure and schedule implementation meetings, define agendas and expected decisions, facilitate discussions, document outcomes, and distribute concise recaps.
· Ensure decisions and actions are documented with owners, dates, rationale, dependencies, and required follow-up, and persistently drive closure.
· Create concise reporting that clearly distinguishes status updates, actions required, decisions required, risks, issues, milestones, and budget implications.
Budget Development and Monitoring Support
· Maintain the implementation budget, resource plan, assumptions, vendor commitments, forecasts, and supporting business cases.
· Monitor planned versus actual spend, forecast changes, purchase or contract dependencies, and emerging budget risks.
· Partner with Finance, Procurement, HRIT, IT, and workstream owners to maintain accurate budget reporting and supporting documentation.
· Prepare leadership-ready financial summaries and clearly flag decisions, tradeoffs, and corrective actions.
Tools, Reporting, and AI Enablement
· Create executive-ready presentations, dashboards, implementation trackers, requirements documentation, decision materials, and status reporting.
· Use Microsoft Teams and SharePoint to enable disciplined collaboration, document control, meeting management, requirements traceability, and transparent follow-through.
· Build and manage advanced Excel, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or comparable planning tools for schedules, budgets, risks, actions, dependencies, testing, and reporting.
· Apply approved AI capabilities to improve meeting preparation, action capture, reporting, analysis, and workflow efficiency.
Required Qualifications
· 12+ years of progressive project and program management experience, including leadership of highly complex, cross-functional enterprise systems implementations.
· Required direct experience delivering an HR systems implementation of comparable magnitude involving SmartRecruiters and Workday, including integrations, requirements, testing, governance, and deployment.
· Deep understanding of Talent Acquisition processes, ATS and HRIS workflows, data interfaces, systems dependencies, and operating-model impacts.
· Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining business and functional requirements and translating them into implementation plans and accountable workstreams.
· Classically trained, highly seasoned project management practitioner with formal methodology expertise and an active PMP certification or comparable advanced credential.
· Proven ability to establish governance, integrated plans, decision matrices, milestones, budgets, actions, meeting cadences, risks, issues, change control, and executive reporting from the ground up.
· Demonstrated success interfacing between a systems implementation partner and internal Talent Acquisition, HRIT, HR Operations, and IT teams.
· Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, Excel, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, SharePoint, or comparable project-delivery tools.
· Ability to work primarily in Pacific Time and collaborate effectively with geographically distributed stakeholders.
· Exceptional judgment, discretion, written communication, facilitation, organizational discipline, and attention to detail.
Preferred Qualifications
· West Coast-based candidate with established availability during Pacific Time business hours.
· Advanced certification such as PgMP, PMI-ACP, Certified ScrumMaster, or SAFe.
· Experience with Workday Recruiting, SmartRecruiters configuration, middleware, data migration, user acceptance testing, cutover, and change readiness.
· Experience managing implementation partners, consulting spend, statements of work, resource forecasts, and leadership-level financial reporting.
· Experience partnering across Talent Acquisition, HRIT, HR Operations, IT, Finance, Legal, Procurement, and external technology vendors.
· Experience with large-scale HR transformation or ATS/HRIS modernization programs.
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