Senior Project Manager - InsuranceNow - East Coast Preferred

Guidewire is a software company.

Guidewire is the platform P&C insurers trust to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. We combine digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver our platform as a cloud service. More than 540+ insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As a partner to our customers, we continually evolve to enable their success. We are proud of our unparalleled implementation track record with 1600+ successful projects, supported by the largest R&D team and partner ecosystem in the industry. Our Marketplace provides hundreds of applications that accelerate integration, localization, and innovation. 

Summary:

Our Professional Services team is looking for a customer-oriented Senior Project Manager with a track record of delivery expertise on enterprise programs to work directly with customers during the implementation of InsuranceNow.

What You'll Do

• Ability to create, maintain, and ‘own’ Project Roadmap for signed customer support efforts.
• Ability to track a Project budget forecast for the duration of customer support efforts.
• Manages dependencies and timing between work requests.
• Ability to draft statements of work and negotiate with customers.
• Provide leadership, management, and oversight of a single or multiple Implementation and Support projects.
• Demonstrated flexibility in delivering projects using different SDLC methods.
• Provide the project team direction and prioritization of activities per defined and agreed.
• Builds and fosters strong and trusted relationships with customers. Owns and manages customer relationships during implementation. Determines the appropriate amount of Project Management ‘on-site’ time required to maintain relationships.
• Manages customer expectations at both the Project Team and Executive Level through the Project Lifecycle
• Holds the Guidewire team and customer team accountable to agreed-upon deliverables and associated milestones, sets expectations around impacts of delays, and manages stakeholder expectations throughout the implementation process. Escalates delays and project impacts appropriately and creates appropriate project artifacts.
• Captures, manages, and plans mitigation/resolution of project issues and risks.
• Manages internal and external team/stakeholder expectations through daily, weekly, and monthly communications with resources/stakeholders at all levels (team through C level).
• Tracks project budget, risks, and issues and reports on a weekly basis, presenting to Customer Sponsor/Steering Committee at least once monthly. Provides suggestions on how to manage delivery to Customer Leadership successfully.
• Understands customer Production needs and determines Staffing Model, Release Plan, and Roadmap to meet these needs. Direct team as to this plan.
• Balances customer Production Support needs with Implementation activities to ensure overall delivery meets customer needs.
• Determines ‘Implementation Support’ budget approach with customer sponsors, and enforces.
• Travel based on customer needs; typically with new customer kickoff.
• East coast time zone work hours and travel (less than 25%) may be required

What You'll Bring

• Large enterprise program delivery
• P&C Insurance industry – carrier-side is a plus
• Work in a highly matrixed organization
• Proven track record of delivery success
• SaaS software implementation experience
• Executive level customer facing experience
• Extensive Project Management experience; Must have project experience managing complex enterprise level project(s)
• Experience working across multiple projects, and in a project team environment.
• Resource management experience
• Demonstrated skill in working with implementation partners, and managing multi-functional projects including software package implementations and information architecture.
• Follows Agile, Waterfall, or other project management methodologies to ensure complete, documented deliverables, controls, issue resolution, risk mitigation, etc.
• Very strong communication skills (listening, written and verbal).
• Demonstrated excellent negotiation skills within challenging situations.
• Ability to anticipate, mitigate, and resolve risks and conflicts across different stakeholders.
• Ability to function successfully within fast paced, complex projects.
• Experience working with onshore and offshore resources across multiple geographies.
• Technical knowledge of Java enterprise projects and assumes excellent usage level of Microsoft applications stack.
• Experience managing the migration of applications and data between on-prem versions and cloud. 
• Demonstrated ability to lead a team with effective decision making.
• PMP, Prince2 or Equivalent qualification
• Degree in related information technology or business background