AKIRA Senior IT Project Manager

In 2002, AKIRA opened the doors to its first women's clothing boutique in Chicago. Since then, the company has extended its reach to 35+ stores across the United States, as well as a thriving eCommerce business (shopAKIRA.com.) AKIRA is extremely well-poised for sustained growth as we continue to build a nationally recognized brand.

AKIRA’s culture has one very large, distinct difference from other fashion competitors: Other-Worldly Customer Service and Fanatical, Obsessive Attention to the consumer’s needs and desires. The core principle for all employees at AKIRA is to Act and Think Like an Owner, and this belief can be reflected across all areas of the company.

The Position

Senior IT Project Manager

Location

Chicago, IL

Essential Functions:

• Working with Technology and Operations stakeholders to define and establish project objectives, scope, roadmap, milestones, and deliverables as applicable and aligned to delivery strategy
• Producing well-defined technical delivery plans that outlines key project activities, their sequence and delivery timelines
• Driving discussions to socialize technical design and integration approaches with cross impacted dependent applications
• Managing and tracking project tasks and activities to ensure performance and delivery against plan including identifying and managing critical dependencies and coordinating with key stakeholders to address issues as applicable and required in order to ensure the delivery of project objectives and deliverables
• Ensuring Project reporting is up to date and communicated at the appropriate level to stakeholders with project scorecards
• Leading regular working group sessions with key stakeholders within technology, administrative, legal and groups to identify and track actions effectively to support the plan
• Understanding proposed design solutions; challenging decisions where they are non-strategic or have cross impacts and drive them to conclusion; liaising with stakeholders within and outside your line of business
• Risk Management: Collaborating, identifying and tracking all dependencies and risks (technical and non-technical) and exploring mitigation strategies aligned to delivery plan
• Demand Management: Ensuring demand requests are raised, prioritized and resources secured and manage the delivery life cycle. Escalating where necessary, providing all information required for senior management to make prioritization decisions. Responsible for the end-to-end process
• Infrastructure / Environment: Ensuring necessary infrastructure and environments are sourced, set up and made available to support various iterations of testing
• Testing: Ensuring testing approach is agreed and resources secured from technology, administrative and legal departments as well as managing the process and resolution of blockers, issues, risks, dependencies and bottlenecks.
• Overseeing “Go-Live” preparations, including creating activity checklists, runbooks and managing post implementation activities collaboratively with stakeholders.
• Ensuring project documentation are complete, current, and stored appropriately

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of leading and managing IT projects and/or operations
• Four-year degree is required; PMP certification and Microsoft certifications or similar technical certifications are a plus
• Experience implementing and supporting ERP systems
• Experience working with SaaS solutions such as Office 365, including MS Office Suite, Visio, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange
• Experience managing projects in an hybrid environment which include on-prem Active Directory and cloud-based Azure Active Directory
• Knowledge of MS Project, Smartsheet or similar online PM tools
• Understanding of project lifecycle and SDLC

The Ideal Candidate Has/Is:

• Experience in managing projects in Agile and Waterfall methodologies is helpful
• Ability to multi-task with good organizational and time management capabilities
• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills
• Strong documentation and presentation skills to create and present requirements, plans, and supporting documentation
• Proven experience with executing enterprise-level technology projects
• Solid technical background with understanding of Active Directory, Database Systems, Networking, support of Windows-based workstations, Mobile devices, and Web technologies
• Prior hands-on experience in supporting enterprise-scale applications, infrastructure, or devices is a plus
• Result-oriented, focused on achieving a successful completion of the project
• Ability to foster collaboration and motivate teams to work together on large-sale efforts
• Out-of-the-box thinker with creative problem-solving skills
• Excellent organizational, oral/written communication and multitasking skills
• Retail Industry experience a plus

Benefits and Perks:

AKIRA offers competitive benefits for full time employees, including Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, LTD, FSA/HSA, 401(k), and employee discount. We are committed to encouraging internal development and providing significant career enrichment opportunities. Most importantly, what has propelled AKIRA’s growth and success over the years has been the dynamic culture within the company - if you’re filled with passion, have a strong desire to get things done, and if you want to go to a place where you know your work matters and where you can implement your ideas and decisions, then AKIRA just might be the place for you.

Job Type: Full Time