Senior Project Manager, Digital Library Services and NYPL Labs

Description

 Overview:
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is seeking a talented Senior Project Manager to guide the development of its core digital collections platforms and to help steward a portfolio of innovation and engagement projects. The role will be based at the historic central library at 42nd St. (Stephen A. Schwarzman Building).

Opportunity:

At NYPL, we're building a new kind of library that opens our vast collections to the public via responsive applications, linked data and APIs, and adventurous user engagement and crowdsourcing initiatives. In concert with digital leadership, and with NYPL's expert community of curators, librarians, and data specialists, the Senior Project Manager will help advance the development of:

NYPL’s digital repository: the preservation of significant works of human culture ranging from cuneiform tablets to the letters of Thoreau and Whitman;
NYPL Digital Collections website and Archives & Manuscripts portal, plus related APIs: public access (by both humans and computers) to our digitized assets, finding aids, and metadata;
our core metadata systems (e.g. ArchivesSpace, The Museum System, and a local MODS metadata management system) along with a new generation of connectors between them;
crowdsourcing projects, data mining experiments, and other user engagement initiatives, including a major spatial history initiative (NYC Space/Time Directory)

The right candidate will have the chance to work/giving access to mind-blowing material: manuscripts, archives, rare books, maps, A/V, photography -- NYPL has collected it and is putting it online. Frequent contact/collaboration with experts from: libraries, the digital humanities, museums, publishing, open source projects, journalism etc..

Principal Responsibilities:
As Senior Project Manager, you’ll serve as a liaison between the Information Technology Group and NYPL digital product teams and other stakeholder groups. Your primary responsibilities are to plan, track, communicate and help deliver the projects to which you are assigned. You’ll manage projects via NYPL-approved project frameworks, including both Agile and traditional project management approaches. You’ll also be helping to develop a process for transferring successful experiments and incubated products into core library platforms. The candidate must be able to identify issues proactively, resolve conflicts, escalate if necessary, and work across the organization to execute the project.

Lead cross-functional teams in the development and successful completion of small through large-scale initiatives across the entire project lifecycle.
Take an active leadership role in the project team and create an environment that fosters the prescribed project management methods, related processes and standards.
Understand and follow the NYPL project management framework for project delivery.
Ensure that all project team members understand and accept their roles and responsibilities.
Coordinate participation of different tech and stakeholder groups in requirements gathering, specifications, design, development and implementation of key projects.
Help estimate project resources and budget as well as manage costs.
Develop and proactively manage project plans and strategy, scheduling, and identification of risks, contingency plans, and the allocation of available resources.
Oversee the deliverables assigned to cross functional teams, vendors and business resources.
Analyze risk and mitigation, including establishing contingency plans and initiating corrective action as necessary. Identify, track, and remove impediments to project success.
Facilitating change control.
Review project requests and participate in the green-light process.
Keep all stakeholders informed of status and issues. Track and report key project metrics.

Minimum Qualifications:
The position will join the Enterprise PMO group and report to the Director, Program Management Office. S/he will work closely with the NYPL Repository Team, NYPL Labs (http://labs.nypl.org/), and other drivers of NYPL’s future.
Skills are minimum 5-7 years experience as a PM in a technology services / digital media company.  PMI best practices knowledge and experience are required.
Solid experience in managing customer facing applications and services (technical lead experience not required).
Project managed medium to large software development or customer-facing initiatives.
Extensive experience with Agile methodology and Scrum.
Experience managing vendor relationships and projects involving vendor selection and implementation.
Leadership skills and enthusiastic can-do attitude.
Relationship building and partnership skills.
Excellent communication, collaboration, and facilitation skills.
Structured thinking and strong organizational skills.
Excellent writing and presentation skills.
Excellent project management and time management skills.
Self-starter, requiring minimal supervision (but not afraid to call for help).
PMI Certification is highly desirable.
Bachelor’s Degree

Bonus points:
Familiarity with digital library technologies and standards.
Experience with the Fedora open source repository software.
Familiarity with library metadata standards (Dublin Core, MODS, MARCXML, RDF, BIBFRAME, etc.)