Innovation Enablement Senior Project Manager

At Kirkland & Ellis, we don’t just meet the standard for legal excellence — we set it. Our culture is built on teamwork, ingenuity and an unwavering commitment to continuous growth. We tackle the most sophisticated legal challenges with bold ideas and innovative solutions, powered by the exceptional experience and ambition of our 7,000+ people, including 4,000+ attorneys, across 24 offices worldwide.

Our dedicated professionals share our lawyers’ commitment to excellence and show up each day to do meaningful work that helps drive global business, investment and innovation forward.

You are a driven, experienced project manager who thrives at the intersection of strategy and execution with a demonstrated track record of delivering on strategic projects enabling large-scale technology transformations in a professional services organization. You have a keen ability to apply disciplined project management principles and influence outcomes across internal and external teams. You are resilient, agile, and have a curious mindset and a passion for emerging technologies.

• Impact. As a Senior Project Manager, you will report to the Associate Director of Strategic Innovation Projects focusing on the successful delivery of leadership's strategic AI projects, helping to turn ambitious initiatives into operational reality.
• End-to-end Project Leadership. You will lead strategic projects that advance the Firm's innovation and AI roadmap, including vendor partnerships, client-facing initiatives, and internal development, ensuring that initiatives move from concept, planning, testing, execution, and adoption with clear accountability for outcomes. You will help to ensure strategic objectives are effectuated through actionable project plans with defined scope, milestones, resource requirements, and success metrics.
• Tracking and Reporting. You will maintain real-time project data and trackers to ensure progress and momentum for strategic projects. You will prepare and present clear, actionable materials for project status meetings, stakeholder reviews, and steering committees.
• Cross-functional collaboration and internal and external stakeholder management. You will collaborate closely across Innovation, leadership, IT, Risk, and Security, and third-party technology vendors to support and execute on projects that enable responsible, ethical, and sustained assessment, development, and adoption of AI tools and processes. You will engage frequently with leadership, attorneys, administrative stakeholders and third-party vendors to drive alignment and execution.
  
  You will communicate effectively with diverse stakeholder groups, translating strategic ambition into action items and outcomes.
• Risk, Dependency, and Governance. You will proactively identify, track, and mitigate risks, issues, and dependencies. You will elevate when time, cost, or resources impact outcomes. You have an ability to identify and anticipate where dependencies related to governance and policy compliance are implicated and can exercise judgment to either proactively resolve or expeditiously elevate, as necessary.

• Minimum of 7 years’ experience in a project management or similar operational role, involving cross-team coordination within a global professional services organization or law firm. Bachelor’s degree and/or certification(s) in project management (e.g., PMP, CAPM, PMI-ACP, AgilePM) is strongly preferred.
• Experience managing a project portfolio related to technology transformation or change initiatives, technology product/service launches, or similar tech-enabled strategic priorities to enhance client service offerings.
• Experience working with technology vendors, in particular on strategic partnerships, is strongly preferred.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to collaborate and influence across stakeholder types, including leadership, attorneys, technologists, and business teams.
• A high degree of professionalism, autonomy, accuracy, accountability and organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and stakeholder demands independently.
• Familiarity with data…