About this role
Job Summary
The Projects Lead is responsible for Project and Portfolio Management, leading and coordinating multiple concurrent technology, data, AI, automation, and business improvement initiatives. The role partners with business and technology stakeholders to align priorities, scope, resources, and expected outcomes while promoting effective execution, continuous improvement, and value realization.
The Projects Lead provides functional leadership across cross-functional teams without direct people-management responsibilities and serves as a key connection between business needs, project execution, and technology delivery.
Duties & Responsibilities
• Lead and coordinate a portfolio of technology, data, AI, automation, and business improvement projects, ensuring alignment with organizational priorities and expected business outcomes.
• Lead projects throughout their lifecycle, from initial assessment and planning through execution, validation, implementation, and transition to production or operational ownership.
• Maintain visibility and facilitate prioritization of the project portfolio based on business value, impact, urgency, effort, dependencies, risks, technical feasibility, and available team capacity.
• Partner with business and technology stakeholders to understand business needs, operational processes, requirements, expected outcomes, and success criteria, ensuring sufficient clarity before solutions are developed or implemented.
• Negotiate and facilitate alignment on project scope, priorities, timelines, deliverables, and trade-offs with stakeholders, balancing business expectations, technical considerations, dependencies, and available capacity.
• Functionally coordinate cross-functional contributors across Engineering, Data & Analytics, AI, IT, Operations, Finance, and other business areas, promoting clear ownership, accountability, collaboration, and effective execution.
• Proactively identify, track, and facilitate the management of project risks, blockers, dependencies, scope changes, and capacity constraints, ensuring timely mitigation, decision-making, and escalation when necessary.
• Collaborate with technical leadership to incorporate appropriate quality and production-readiness requirements, including architecture, security, data, testing, maintainability, scalability, and operational considerations.
• Monitor project outcomes and value realization against defined success criteria, identifying whether delivered solutions are achieving their expected operational, financial, customer, or strategic benefits and facilitating corrective actions or further improvements when needed.
• Apply continuous improvement and structured problem-solving practices, including Lean, Kaizen, and Lean Six Sigma principles, to improve processes, reduce waste and rework, identify root causes, and increase project and operational effectiveness.
• Leverage AI and AI-assisted development capabilities to improve project execution, visibility, and decision-making, including the creation of lightweight solutions, automations, dashboards, and tools that enhance project and portfolio management.
• Promote and demonstrate Spartan’s culture, values, and principles across projects, teams, and stakeholder interactions, ensuring they are reflected in day-to-day decisions, collaboration, accountability, and project execution.
Role Scope
The Projects Lead provides functional and cross-functional leadership across multiple projects and initiatives. The role coordinates project activities, facilitates priorities and commitments, promotes accountability, and provides project-related feedback to contributors and leadership.