Staff Project Manager

Job Summary

The Staff Project Manager is a senior individual contributor within OpenGov's Professional Services Strategic Projects team, responsible for owning delivery on specific multi-suite, high-complexity government implementations. This role sits above the Lead/Sr. PM tier and below Principal PM: the Staff PM defines and oversees implementation strategy for the projects assigned to them, without holding people-management authority and without the org-wide, cross-portfolio strategy mandate carried by the Principal PM.

The Staff PM operates as the connective tissue on their assigned engagements — coordinating Solutions Architecture, Technical, and Change Management functions, managing scope and risk with commercial discipline, and serving as the primary program-level point of contact for Director- and VP-level client stakeholders. The role requires the judgment to run a complex, multi-department implementation independently, while building the documentation and governance habits that make the engagement defensible under scrutiny.

This is an individual-contributor role. Influence across matrixed delivery teams — SA, Technical, Change Management, and vertical resources — is exercised through structured process and stakeholder trust, not direct authority.

Program & Project Delivery

• Own end-to-end delivery for one or more multi-suite, multi-department government implementations, including cross-workstream sequencing and phased go-live planning.
• Apply matrix program management discipline to coordinate SA, Technical, and Change Management resources without direct reporting authority over those functions.
• Establish and maintain project governance artifacts: RAID logs, decision registers, escalation paths, and configuration-freeze protocols appropriate to the engagement's complexity.
• Define scope boundaries at the project and workstream level; identify client-side triggers for change orders and document them in writing before they become disputes.
• Escalate risks to the Principal PM / Sr. Director with enough lead time for intervention — no risk is surfaced for the first time in a client meeting.

Stakeholder Management

• Serve as the primary point of accountability for Director- and VP-level client stakeholders throughout the implementation lifecycle.
• Navigate multi-department client governance, competing priorities, and shifting decision-makers with professionalism and a clear paper trail.
• Deliver structured, client-ready status reporting, escalation memos, steering committee materials, and go/no-go readiness briefs.
• Partner with Sales and PS Leadership during scoping on assigned or prospective engagements to assess delivery feasibility and inform SOW structure.

Delivery Governance & Quality

• Define and enforce go-live readiness criteria, configuration-freeze processes, and UAT acceptance standards for assigned engagements.
• Proactively identify project-level risks — scope, resource, timeline, and client-readiness — and own mitigation plans through resolution.
• Lead root-cause analysis on delivery issues that span multiple workstreams; document findings and surface them to the Principal PM / PS leadership when the fix has implications beyond the current engagement.
• Ensure delivery consistency through adherence to PS methodology and shared tooling (RocketLane, Salesforce), and contribute observations to playbook development.

Change Management & Client Enablement

• Coordinate change management activities for assigned implementations — organizational readiness, adoption risk, and stakeholder alignment across departments — in partnership with the Change Management function.
• Advise client stakeholders on readiness gaps and adoption risk specific to their governmental constraints and political dynamics.
• Guide clients through scope evolution without losing delivery momentum or allowing verbal-only agreements to stand as commitments.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Mentorship

• Act as a day-to-day resource and informal mentor for Lead/Sr. PMs and Implementation Consultants staffed on the same engagements.
• Identify delivery trends within assigned engagements — scope patterns, resource gaps, client-readiness indicators — and raise them to PS leadership with a recommendation.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to route field delivery observations into product feedback for the assigned account(s).
• Feed engagement-specific learnings from multi-department, multi-suite projects up to the Principal PM and PS leadership for incorporation into the broader delivery methodology.