Lead, IT Project Manager

The role brings mature portfolio management discipline to the department. The Manager owns project intake, prioritization, capacity planning, and portfolio governance, monitors portfolio health across scope, schedule, budget, resource, risk, and stakeholder satisfaction, and reports portfolio status, value, and trade off decisions to IT leadership and business sponsors.

Because the project management team is small, this is a hands on leadership role. The Manager personally leads one to two high priority or strategically sensitive initiatives, using direct involvement to model expected practices, and coaches the team through real delivery situations.

The Manager, IT Project Management partners with stakeholders across IT and the business to ensure projects deliver on their objectives while meeting applicable regulatory, quality, and security standards, and owns the ongoing maturation of PM methodology, intake, prioritization, and capacity planning processes.

Over time, this role is expected to expand beyond IT, establishing project management as an organization wide capability and growing the function's scope, standards, and team accordingly.

Essential Functions, Duties, and Responsibilities

• Build and lead the project management team, including hiring, onboarding, objective setting, performance management, coaching, and career development, and sustain a collaborative culture aligned with KLS Martin values and IT department goals.
• Set and enforce the delivery standard expected of Project Managers, including the fundamental business knowledge required to shape scope, challenge assumptions, and steer decisions as active delivery leaders on every project they lead.
• Demonstrate AI fluency by applying AI tools in daily work to solve problems, accelerate delivery, and build business solutions, consistent with company AI governance and data handling standards.
• Build AI fluency across the team by setting adoption expectations, coaching hands on use, and holding team members accountable for applying AI to improve the quality and speed of their work.
• Own the IT project portfolio, including intake, prioritization, sequencing, capacity planning, and the assignment of work across the team, in partnership with IT leadership and business stakeholders.
• Maintain portfolio transparency for IT leadership and business sponsors by reporting status, trends, financial performance, and expected benefits, and by escalating material risks, issues, and resource constraints in time to act on them.
• Hold the team accountable for delivery on individual projects, conducting project reviews, testing the quality of plans and risk management, and removing obstacles that put commitments at risk.
• Own the project management discipline itself, including methodology, standards, templates, tooling, and reporting, and advance its maturity over time, building practices that can scale beyond IT as the function's scope expands.
• Personally lead high priority or strategically sensitive initiatives, modeling the expected standard of delivery and coaching Project Managers through real situations on their own projects.
• Serve as the senior point of contact for the IT project portfolio with business stakeholders, and represent the project management function in steering committees, cross functional planning, and vendor discussions, including vendor evaluations and statement of work reviews.
• Partner with peer leaders across IT and the business to ensure project delivery aligns with technical architecture, operational standards, and applicable regulatory requirements.
• Partner with Quality and Regulatory to support audit and inspection readiness for projects involving regulated systems, including IT systems lifecycle management and computerized system validation.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications: Education and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Business, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 8+ years of progressive project management experience delivering medium to large IT initiatives.
• 3+ years of experience managing or supervising project managers, including performance management, coaching, and development.
• Demonstrated experience establishing or maturing portfolio management practices, including intake, prioritization, capacity planning, and portfolio level reporting.
• Experience establishing, scaling, or leading a project management function or PMO preferred.
• Proficiency with project management methodologies (waterfall, agile, hybrid) and modern PM tooling such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Smartsheet, Wrike, or equivalent.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple competing priorities under pressure and to make trade off decisions with incomplete information.
• PMP, PgMP, PfMP, or PMI ACP certification, or equivalent preferred.
• Prior experience in a regulated industry (medical device, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or other FDA regulated environment) preferred.
• Familiarity with enterprise IT domains relevant to the role, including infrastructure, enterprise applications (ERP, HRIS, CRM, QMS), and cybersecurity preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Ability to design and run portfolio management processes, including intake, prioritization, capacity planning, and portfolio reporting with budget and benefits tracking.
• Strong command of project management methodologies (waterfall, agile, hybrid) and delivery lifecycle practices in regulated environments, with proficiency in modern PM tooling (Jira, Azure DevOps, Smartsheet, Wrike, or equivalent) and Microsoft Office.
• Business acumen sufficient to understand the objectives and economics of a project and steer decisions accordingly.
• Ability to develop, coach, and hold accountable a team of project managers.
• Clear executive communication, with the ability to build relationships and drive alignment across IT, the business, and vendors without formal authority.
• Sound judgment under pressure, including the ability to evaluate trade offs and prioritize with incomplete information.
• Knowledge of vendor management practices including statement of work review, SLA governance, and performance evaluation.
• Ability to work effectively in both onsite and remote environments as required by the business.