Project Manager Oracle Student Cloud at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA

Job description

Allegheny College seeks an experienced, results-oriented Project Manager to lead the implementation of Oracle Student Cloud, a transformational initiative to modernize the College's Student Information System (SIS) and improve the processes supporting the student lifecycle. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, this position will provide end-to-end project leadership, ensuring that institutional stakeholders, implementation partners, and technical teams are aligned, accountable, and positioned to deliver a successful implementation. The successful candidate will bring demonstrated experience managing complex enterprise technology implementations, establishing disciplined project governance, proactively identifying and resolving risks, and driving decisions and deliverables across multiple functional areas. This individual must be comfortable navigating ambiguity, challenging assumptions, holding internal and external partners accountable, and influencing stakeholders without direct supervisory authority. The Project Manager will serve as the central point of coordination and accountability for the implementation, translating strategic objectives into actionable plans, measurable milestones, and successful outcomes. The role requires a collaborative but decisive leader who can balance technical complexities, institutional priorities, resource constraints, and organizational change. Experience implementing Student Information Systems, enterprise cloud platforms, or comparable institution-wide technology solutions is highly desirable. The ideal candidate combines strong project management discipline with exceptional communication, problem-solving, negotiation, and change leadership skills. Project Leadership, Planning & Execution Lead the planning, coordination, execution, and delivery of the Oracle Student Cloud implementation, ensuring alignment with institutional priorities, approved scope, budget, resources, and timelines. Develop, maintain, and actively manage a comprehensive integrated project plan that defines milestones, dependencies, deliverables, owners, critical paths, and acceptance criteria. Establish clear accountability for project deliverables across functional departments, Information Technology Services (ITS), implementation partners, and other stakeholders. Proactively monitor progress, identify schedule deviations and resource constraints, and develop corrective action plans to maintain project momentum. Facilitate productive project meetings that result in clear decisions, documented action items, assigned owners, and defined completion dates. Coordinate the timely resolution of cross-functional dependencies and decisions, escalating issues when required to protect project outcomes. Vendor Management & Delivery Accountability Serve as the primary project management liaison between Allegheny College, Oracle, implementation partners, and other external vendors. Monitor vendor performance against contractual commitments, statements of work, project plans, milestones, and established quality expectations. Hold implementation partners accountable for timely delivery, adequate documentation, issue resolution, and completion of agreed-upon work products. Evaluate the quality and completeness of vendor deliverables in collaboration with functional and technical subject matter experts. Identify vendor performance concerns early, document deficiencies, negotiate corrective action plans, and escalate unresolved issues through established governance channels. Coordinate and manage changes to scope, schedule, resources, or deliverables, including analysis of potential budget and institutional impacts. Stakeholder Engagement & Cross-Functional Leadership Build effective working relationships across Academic Affairs, the Registrar's Office, Student Accounts, Financial Aid, Admissions, Institutional Effectiveness, ITS, and other relevant institutional departments. Lead cross-functional teams through complex project act