Director, State Contract Project Management

About the Team

College Board’s Operations division aims to be a world class digital assessment delivery and customer engagement organization that supports millions of students and thousands of test centers, annually. The State Contract Program Management (SCPM) team is a close knit, high performing team of 8 people dedicated to providing a high level of implementation support to our state accountability customers. The SCPM team works collaboratively to solve problems and enact change, leveraging each team member’s strengths. This team works closely with external stakeholders including assessment departments in state departments of education, district assessment coordinators, and school test coordinators. Internally, this team partners closely with other assessment operations team members as well as state and district partnership colleagues.

About the Opportunity

As a Director on the SCPM team, you are accountable for developing and implementing plans and protocols to meet the needs of state contract implementations. You will be expected to create and maintain detailed project plans and associated project deliverables. You will also be responsible for tracking the status of identified issues and risks and ensuring that they are mitigated and resolved effectively. You will be most successful in this role if you are a hands-on, flexible project manager who is willing to go above and beyond standard Project Management practices to lean-in as the project requires.

• Create and manage integrated project schedules for the state contract work, as well as individual schedules to guide each state’s implementation.
• Provide project planning, including scheduling and resource requirements.

• Collaborate with project stakeholders to create/maintain implementation schedules.
• Ensure projects are delivered on-time and exceeding stakeholders' expectations.
• Perform overall project risk and issue management, with detailed tracking as well as mitigation planning.
• Maintain documentation of contract requirements.
• Maintain meeting notes and action item tracking for SCPM team meetings and other internal project meetings.

• Facilitate meetings and communicate formally and informally with internal and external stakeholders.
• Organize, update, and maintain information repositories including documentation, master schedules, collaboration tools, and tactical information.
• Manage project communications including providing formal and informal status to persons within and outside the project team.

• Directly support Implementation Managers in creation of customer-facing reports tracking implementation activities.

• Develop process recommendations and assist in implementing for future implementations.
• Work with SCPM team and other internal stakeholders to develop processes for state contract digital administration activities and document these processes.
• Identify and recommend process improvements to enhance project management and implementation effectiveness to continually improve customer experience and satisfaction.

• Perform ad-hoc duties or tasks as assigned or required.
• Apply analytic methodologies and principles to identify improvement areas and support process re-engineering.

• Experience using innovative thinking and data to inform decisions and actions while adapting to changing conditions
• 3-5 years’ experience in project or program management
• Demonstrated communication and decision-making skills
• Experience communicating with customers and as a member of customer-facing project teams
• Demonstrated experience as an informal leader with a track record of managing complex initiatives and projects

• The ability to travel 4-6 times a year to College Board offices and/or to customers
• The ability to effectively coordinate multiple responsibilities simultaneously, with fast, flexible, cooperative work style and the ability to reprioritize as warranted
• Experience with a wide variety of tools, including Salesforce, Smartsheet, Excel, and Jira, with the flexibility to leverage the best tool for each problem/opportunity
• A strong desire to learn & improve with experience leveraging feedback and performance levels to course correct
• Comfort working in undefined situations and evidence of creating clarity and path forward

• We reward performance through annual bonuses and provide opportunities for salary growth over time through base compensation increases, merit raises and promotions.
• Our robust benefits package includes health, dental, and vision insurance, tuition assistance, paid time off, paid parental leave, retirement benefits with a generous matching program, and more.

• Each salary offer is determined carefully using internal and external benchmarking and adjusting for the candidate’s location. You will have an opportunity to discuss salary in more detail after you begin the application process.
• We believe in compensating staff members fairly in relation to each other, their qualifications, and their impact. The salary range for a new employee in this position is $72,000 to $130,000. The salary offer of an individual candidate within this range is specific to their location and qualifications.

• Interview Process Includes: Resume and Application Submission; Recruiter Phone Screen; Hiring Manager Interview; Performance Exercise (such as drafting a short plan or producing a writing sample); Panel Interview; Reference Checks (approximately 6 week process)
• Preferred Applicant Deadline: August 16 , 2023