Senior Implementation Manager / Deputy Program Manager

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced, hands-on Deputy Program Manager to help lead the implementation of a complex enterprise administrative system.

This is a delivery-focused role requiring active participation in the implementation—not primarily a PMO, reporting, or governance position. The Deputy Program Manager will work closely with functional, technical, QA, data-conversion, training, customer, vendor, and advisory teams to resolve requirements gaps, facilitate solution decisions, manage defects and dependencies, and keep daily delivery moving forward.

The successful candidate will become knowledgeable about the application and its supporting business processes. While this is not a software-development position, the individual must be comfortable participating in detailed functional and technical discussions and helping the team make practical implementation decisions.

Responsibilities

• Support the Program Manager in leading the daily execution of a complex enterprise software implementation.
• Develop a detailed understanding of the application, its functionality, and the business processes it supports.
• Drive functional requirements from analysis and clarification through development, testing, acceptance, and implementation.
• Work with Business Analysts and subject-matter experts to identify and resolve unclear, incomplete, conflicting, or missing requirements.
• Partner with developers, architects, and functional leads to evaluate solution options and resolve implementation questions.
• Participate in and lead defect-triage meetings.
• Help assess defect severity and business impact, establish priorities, assign ownership, and track issues through resolution.
• Coordinate activities and dependencies across functional, technical, QA, data-conversion, integration, training, customer, vendor, and advisory teams.
• Ensure requirements, development, testing, conversion, training, and deployment activities remain aligned.
• Provide project-management oversight for QA, UAT, training, conversion, release-readiness, and go-live activities.
• Follow up on decisions, risks, issues, action items, and deliverables to maintain accountability and delivery momentum.
• Identify obstacles, bring the appropriate teams together, and help drive issues to practical resolution.
• Support release planning, readiness assessments, implementation, go-live, and post-production stabilization.
• Lead project meetings and represent the program with customers, vendors, partners, and senior stakeholders when needed.
• Maintain schedules, risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and status reporting while remaining closely involved in delivery.
• Support RFI/RFP responses, proposals, product demonstrations, internal project-management initiatives, and product or configuration activities as requested.

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• Active Project Management Professional certification.
• At least eight years of experience leading enterprise software implementations, technology programs, or complex application-delivery initiatives.
• Direct implementation or production-support experience with at least one of the following:
• Policy administration systems
• Claims administration or adjudication systems
• Billing or payment administration systems
• Pension or retirement administration systems
• Benefits, enrollment, or eligibility administration systems
• Comparable enterprise platforms supporting complex, rules-driven business transactions
• Demonstrated experience managing requirements from analysis through implementation.
• Experience participating in or leading defect-triage, UAT, testing, and solution-resolution discussions.
• Ability to understand application functionality and business processes in sufficient detail to help resolve issues and make implementation decisions.
• Experience coordinating Business Analysts, developers, QA analysts, conversion teams, trainers, vendors, customers, and subject-matter experts.
• Strong problem-solving, critical-thinking, facilitation, and decision-making abilities.
• Experience identifying and managing dependencies across multiple implementation workstreams.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to balance detailed daily execution with program-level leadership.
• Willingness to travel approximately one week per month.

Preferred Qualifications

• Public-sector or government-system implementation experience.
• Experience implementing systems in insurance, healthcare, retirement, benefits, financial services, or another regulated environment.
• Experience with application configuration, data conversion, reconciliation, integrations, or interface development.
• Experience overseeing formal QA, UAT, training, release-readiness, and go-live workstreams.
• Experience supporting RFI/RFP responses, proposals, estimates, customer demonstrations, or solution presentations.
• Familiarity with Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid implementation methodologies.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate is a practical implementation leader who is comfortable working in the details. This person does more than maintain schedules and prepare status reports—they understand what the teams are building, recognize where requirements or business processes are unclear, participate in defect and solution discussions, and actively help remove obstacles.

Candidates whose experience is primarily limited to PMO governance, executive reporting, infrastructure delivery, or Agile coaching without direct enterprise application implementation experience may not be the right fit for this position.

Benefits

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k)
• PTO