Sr. Project Manager – Higher Education ERP & SaaS, Remote-United States

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with approximately 3,000 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 21 million students. Ellucian's AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff. Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data-rich tools for student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian's innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

Ellucian is seeking an experienced Senior Project Manager to serve as a Strategic Engagement Manager (SEM), leading complex Banner and/or Colleague SaaS Modernization engagements while managing a select portfolio of Advisory Services customers.

This role combines strategic engagement leadership with project and program management to align institutional objectives, contractual commitments, delivery execution, and customer outcomes. The Senior Project Manager serves as a trusted advisor to institutional leadership, driving executive alignment, anticipating risks, facilitating critical decisions, and ensuring successful engagement delivery.

The ideal candidate brings strong project management experience, executive communication skills, ERP and higher education knowledge, and the ability to influence stakeholders and drive customer outcomes. SaaS modernization experience is highly valued.

Where You Will Make an Impact

• Lead complex Banner and/or Colleague SaaS Modernization engagements, aligning institutional priorities, contractual commitments, delivery activities, and customer outcomes.

• Serve as a trusted advisor to institutional leadership, driving executive alignment, facilitating critical decisions, managing escalations, and maintaining strong customer relationships.

• Establish and maintain effective engagement governance, including executive checkpoints, decision management, risk reviews, and escalation processes.

• Proactively anticipate risks, identify cross-functional dependencies, and drive timely resolution of issues before they impact engagement success.

• Coordinate Ellucian delivery teams, customer stakeholders, and implementation partners to ensure alignment, accountability, and effective execution.

• Apply project and program management methodologies to oversee scope, schedules, milestones, resources, financial performance, and contractual deliverables.

• Assess overall engagement health, including delivery progress, resource capacity, milestone readiness, and customer sentiment, providing actionable recommendations to leadership.

• Partner with institutional stakeholders to demonstrate customer value, support organizational change and operational readiness, and drive successful SaaS adoption.

• Manage a select portfolio of Advisory Services customers, overseeing customer relationships, service delivery, resource utilization, roadmaps, escalations, and contractual commitments.

• Identify opportunities to improve engagement delivery, strengthen customer relationships, and support renewals and service expansion in partnership with account teams.

What You Will Bring

• 5 years of experience in project management, program management, or complex customer-facing technology delivery, including enterprise ERP implementations or SaaS transformation initiatives.

• Proven project management expertise, including governance, scope and schedule management, resource coordination, financial oversight, risk mitigation, and delivery accountability.

• Working knowledge of ERP environments, higher education business processes, and enterprise SaaS modernization.

• Strong executive communication, stakeholder management, relationship-building, negotiation, and facilitation skills.

• Demonstrated ability to anticipate risks, solve complex problems, influence without direct authority, and drive outcomes across cross-functional teams.

• Experience managing customer-facing consulting engagements, professional services delivery, or complex implementation programs.

• Experience with Ellucian Banner, Colleague, or comparable ERP solutions is valued.

• Familiarity with Salesforce, Certinia, Smartsheet, or comparable project and professional services management tools. Hands-on experience with one/all of these tools preferred.

• PMP, PgMP, Agile, or comparable project management certification is valued.

• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision  
• Flexible time off  
• Thrive Flex Lifestyle Account (LSA) that allows you to contribute towards your health, financial or learning interests
• 401k w/ match & BrightPlan - to help you save for the future
• Parental Leave
• 5 charitable days to support the community that supports us
• Telemedicine
• Wellness
  
  • Headspace Care (mental health)
  • Wellbeats (virtual fitness classes)
• RethinkCare & Wellthy– caregiver support
• Diversity and inclusion programs which provide access to internal employee resource groups  
• Employee referral bonuses to encourage the addition of great new people to the team
• We Foster a learning culture with:
  o Education Assistance Program
  o Professional development opportunities
  o LinkedIn Learning

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