Senior IT Project Manager

Company Description

By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive.

Harvard University's Central Administration (CADM) is a 5,000+ employee organization that supports the university's overall excellence by understanding and serving the needs of its schools, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and surrounding communities. Through dynamic and collaborative partnerships, CADM provides high-quality and efficient services to the schools to help them achieve their goals.

Our Mission: huit.harvard.edu/about

We empower the Harvard community with essential and transformative technologies to advance education, knowledge, and discovery.

HUIT’s core values are:

• Human-centered
• University-focused
• Innovation-driven
• Team-oriented

HUIT’s IT Academy aims to enable each IT staff person to grow professionally and become a trusted partner to her or his team. The IT Academy is built on the belief that every IT staff member across the University (including technology employees at each school and campus) can grow in her or his area of expertise as well as building strong people and project management skills.

Learn more here: https://itacademy.harvard.edu/.

The Senior Project Manager leads project execution and supports business operations for a defined subset of Technology Partner Services, including Platform Services.

This role ensures that services and initiatives within this portfolio are well-managed and operationally disciplined. The Senior PM partners closely with the Associate Director of Operational Excellence, service owners, and senior leaders to translate priorities into executable plans, track delivery, manage risk, and improve operational consistency.

This role is primarily execution-focused, providing structure, coordination, and operational rigor that enables senior leaders to focus on strategy and service ownership.

Manage a portfolio of initiatives and maintain visibility into:

• Project status and milestones
• Dependencies and risks
• Resource and capacity constraints
• Support governance processes by:
  • Preparing status reporting
  • Tracking decisions and follow-ups
  • Escalating risks and issues appropriately
  • Help ensure initiatives deliver against agreed scope, timeline, and outcomes

Support consistent operational practices across the assigned portfolio.

• Assist in developing, maintaining, and operationalizing:
  • Standard operating processes
  • Project and initiative playbooks
  • Documentation and reporting standards
  • Participate in post-incident and retrospective reviews as appropriate, helping track follow-up actions and improvements.
  • Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, clarity, and coordination.

Serve as a coordination point between service owners, architects, project teams, and central partners.

• Support preparation of materials for leadership, governance forums, and stakeholder updates.
• Help ensure information flows clearly and consistently across teams.
• Build effective working relationships with peers across Infrastructure and HUIT.

Support Associate Director in maintaining well-managed business operations for the assigned portfolio, including:

• Budget planning and tracking
• Cost transparency and reporting
• Partner with AD, service owners, and finance teams to ensure:
  • Analysis and clear…