WELCOME TO INDIANAPOLIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
At IPS, we believe in the transformative power of education. We work collectively every day to prepare our students for success in the classroom and in life by providing equitable, high-quality educational experiences across our family of schools. IPS is a place to make an impact, grow your career, and ensure every student has access to a high quality education, all while earning a good living in a district on the move. While the work is challenging, it is deeply meaningful and impactful. We seek innovators and trailblazers who bring varying experiences and expertise and share our belief that every child deserves access to an exceptional education. As part of TeamIPS, you’ll create lasting connections, find a sense of belonging, and feel supported to make a meaningful difference in students’ lives.
In return, no matter your role here, we expect a commitment to excellence and accountability. You’ll be held to high standards. Resilience and passion are key—you must be adaptable, handling adversity with flexibility while putting students at the heart of everything you do. Ethical conduct, clear communication, and mutual respect are fundamental. Being a dependable, collaborative team player who builds meaningful relationships is essential.
Together, we are Proving What’s Possible by building a community where everyone belongs and each student has the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
A Career in IPS Offers…
Purpose and Impact:
- Essential Contributions: In every non-teaching and non-leadership role, your work directly supports the success of IPS students and schools. Whether you’re maintaining facilities, providing student services, or managing administrative operations, you play a key part in ensuring an equitable and high-quality educational environment.
- Belonging and Community: IPS is a place where every employee is valued. You’ll join a supportive community that promotes respect, teamwork, and a shared commitment to serving students and families.
Professional and Personal Growth:
- Training and Development Opportunities: IPS offers a variety of training programs to help staff build new skills and grow professionally. This includes access to development opportunities for administrative, technical, and operational roles, as well as pathways to becoming a certified teacher.
- Skill Enhancement: Whether you’re new to your role or seeking to deepen your expertise, IPS provides resources and support for continuous improvement.
Comprehensive Compensation and Benefits:
- Fair Compensation: IPS ensures competitive wages and regularly reviews pay structures to maintain equity.
- Extensive Benefits Package: Employees enjoy comprehensive health coverage, dental and vision plans, life insurance, disability insurance, and retirement plans. Additional financial benefits include flexible spending accounts and eligibility for federal loan forgiveness programs.
Work-Life Balance and Well-being:
- Generous Leave Policies: IPS offers vacation, personal, and sick leave, along with paid holidays. Twelve-month employees benefit from floating holidays, and unused personal leave rolls into the sick leave balance.
- Wellness Programs: IPS prioritizes staff well-being with access to wellness initiatives, including health screenings and an employee assistance program for confidential support and counseling.
What We Expect:
- Professionalism and Reliability: Every role at IPS is vital to the district’s success. We expect staff to demonstrate professionalism, dependability, and a commitment to providing excellent service to students, educators, and families.
- Collaboration and Communication: IPS values teamwork. Working collaboratively with your colleagues ensures a supportive environment for all. Clear communication and mutual respect are key to maintaining this culture.
- Flexibility and Problem-Solving: As a large, dynamic district, IPS needs staff who are adaptable and proactive in solving problems to meet the ever-changing needs of students and schools.
JOIN US!
Indianapolis Public Schools is more than a workplace; it’s a community where purpose, impact, and belonging come together to help Prove What’s Possible – in your career and in your school. If you’re ready to embrace challenges, strive for excellence, and make a meaningful impact, IPS is the place for you.
SUMMARY OF OPPORTUNITY:
The Systems Project Manager reports directly to the Director of Systems Project Management and drives project implementation, workstream oversight, and day-to-day coordination. Collaborating closely with the project team, this role unifies all lines of business within the district, ensuring strong communication, streamlined coordination, and successful outcomes. Acts as the central project liaison, the Systems Project Manager integrates strategic thinking, team coordination, problem-solving, and people management to deliver on organizational goals. This position is dynamic and integral to fostering collaboration across interconnected business units, ultimately enabling the district to execute its projects effectively and efficiently.
WHAT YOU’LL DO:
- Lead cross-functional Projects: Spearheaded initiatives spanning System, Digital Strategy, Operations, HR, and Finance, ensuring alignment with the district’s broader organizational objectives.
- Drive Transformational Change: Collaborate with stakeholders to prioritize key initiatives, overcome barriers to progress, and foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
- Develop Implementation Plans: Define project scope, set timelines, and allocate resources efficiently for projects that advance the district’s long-term strategy.
- Track and Manage Projects: Monitor progress, proactively resolve issues, and manage stakeholders to keep projects on track and within budget.
- Deliver Timely and Cost-Effective Outcomes: Ensure every project meets or exceeds quality, schedule, and financial targets, contributing to the district’s long-term goals.
- Support Continuous Improvement: Contribute ideas for refining project management methodologies and enhancing team efficiency. Stay current on best practices and tools to help drive innovation and improved results
CORE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Leadership: Leading and coordinating project teams, mentoring and motivating team members, and creating a collaborative environment.
- Communication: Communicating with team, stakeholders, project members, and leadership, writing reports, meetings, and articulating instructions.
- Planning: Defining the project's scope, goals, and objectives.
- Organizing: Assigning tasks based on team members' skills and experience.
- Directing: Ensuring the project is on time, on budget, and within scope.
- Manage budget, resources, and procurement: Manages all project resources and oversees project procurement.
- Researching, Benchmarking, and Negotiating: Negotiating with clients, stakeholders, partners, and suppliers to secure the best outcome for the team and projects.
- Managing risk: Identifying potential risks early and developing mitigation strategies (RAID).
- Motivating: Motivating the team and giving them the vision behind the project.
- Monitoring: Monitoring project progress continuously and making detailed scheduled reports.
- Evaluating: Conducting post-project evaluation and identifying successful and unsuccessful project elements.
- Project reporting: Providing project reporting and feedback to the team and Senior Project Manager.
- Documentation: Creates and maintains project documentation and communications.
- Thought Partnership: engage in deeper-level thinking and dialogue to generate new insights, solve complex problems, and refine strategic directions.
- Perform Other Related Duties as Assigned: Undertake any tasks or responsibilities that arise in the normal course of business, ensuring flexibility and responsiveness to evolving organizational needs.
“DAY IN THE LIFE” OVERVIEW”:
On a regular day, as the project manager, you might:
- Check Email and Project Management Tools: Prioritize tasks based on updates and deadlines. Review progress from the previous day and gather any new information that came in overnight.
- Daily Team Stand-Up: Host or attend a short status meeting to align on the day’s deliverables, address any obstacles, and clarify responsibilities. Set or update daily or weekly goals to ensure every team member knows what’s expected.
- Meet with Team and Stakeholders: Meetings, discussions, or scheduled updates with departmental leads (e.g., HR, Finance, Operations) and possibly external vendors. Focus on project requirements, resource allocation, and scheduling needs.
- Monitor Timelines, Project Budgets, and Quality: Metrics across multiple workstreams. Identify and mitigate risks by flagging any potential issues or bottlenecks.
- Team Collaboration & Issue Resolution: Conduct ad-hoc check-ins with task owners to help them overcome hurdles. Make quick decisions or escalate issues to leadership when needed.
- Documentation and Reporting: Update project trackers, Gantt charts, or other tracking tools. Prepare progress reports for leadership, highlighting project status, key milestones, and upcoming tasks. Provides data and reports to the Senior Project Manager. Author and maintains departmental SOPs to establish clear workflows, compliance standards, and processes.
- Strategic Planning Sessions: Work on long-term initiatives and roadmap planning with the Senior Manager or leadership. Align project goals with organizational strategy and critical objectives.
- Cross-Functional Meetings: Collaborate with cross-departmental teams to bridge communication gaps and align on resources and timelines. Act as the voice for the collective project team ensuring needs are understood and integrated.
- Budget and Resource Review: Evaluate budget usage to confirm projects are on track financially. Assess resource requirements (people, technology, materials) for both current and upcoming project phases.
- Issue Resolution and Next Steps: Address any outstanding issues identified throughout the day. Document action items and follow-ups. Raise unresolved issues to the Senior Manager.
- Team Debrief: Recap successes, challenges, and learning points from the day. Reinforce accountability for the next day’s deliverables.
- Wrap-Up and Future Planning: Finalize updates to project status documents and calendars. Schedule tasks, meetings, and milestones for the following day/week.
WHAT YOU’ll BRING: SKILLS AND MINDSETS:
As an ideal candidate for this role, you will be able to achieve the following:
- Exceptional Leadership & Team-Building: Demonstrates strong leadership qualities and the ability to foster a collaborative team environment.
- Project Management Expertise: Proficient in the principles of project management, customer service best practices, and data management.
- Strategic Mindset: Able to align daily tasks, team needs, objectives, and overarching goals to drive strategic project plans.
- Multi-priority Management: Skilled at effectively supervising teams and balancing several competing priorities simultaneously.
- Organization & Time Management: Maintains superior organizational habits and efficient time management to meet deadlines.
- Strong Communication & Engagement: Excellent interpersonal skills, enabling effective collaboration and stakeholder engagement. Comfortable partnering with colleagues, providing clear, concise, and articulate information—both written and verbal. Is an active listener and versed in conflict resolution. Exhibits excellent interpersonal skills, adaptability, and feedback-oriented, enabling effective collaboration and stakeholder engagement.
- Adaptability and Continuous Learning: Growth mindset, remain flexible, adjusting to changing priorities while keeping everyone aligned.
- Cross-level Collaboration: Comfortable partnering with colleagues across all levels of the organization to achieve common objectives.
- Self-motivated & Detail-oriented: Displays initiative, attention to detail, and consistent follow-through to ensure project success. Meticulous about details ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
- Technology Proficiency: Utilize Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Smartsheet, excel, Planner, and other data visualization tools.
EDUCATION, CERTIFICATION, AND LICENSURE REQUIREMENTS:
- Preferred Education: Bachelor’s degree in a business discipline, project management, communications, human resources, education, or another technical business administration field.
- Project Management Experience: 4–5 years minimum of direct project management experience. Alternatively, 5 or more years of combined experience in project management or administrative support—where an equivalent blend of training and experience demonstrates the required knowledge and abilities—may be considered.
- Certifications: PMP (Project Management Professional) or CSM (Certified ScrumMaster) is strongly preferred.
FLSA CLASSIFICATION:
Exempt
ELIGIBILITY FOR REMOTE WORK:
Remote work is eligible at the Supervisor’s discretion
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:
The physical requirements described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel; talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to stand and walk. The employee is occasionally required to sit; reach with hands and arms; and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 10 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.
EEOC STATEMENT:
Indianapolis Public Schools, in accordance with its nondiscrimination policies, will not discriminate in its programs, facilities, or employment or educational opportunities on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, familial status, domestic violence victim status, homelessness or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state or local laws, regulations, or ordinances. Indianapolis Public Schools does not tolerate any form of retaliation or bias-based intimidation, threat, or harassment that demeans individuals’ dignity or interferes with their ability to learn or work.
DISCLAIMER:
Essential functions, as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act, may include any of the above representative duties, knowledge, and skills. This job description is illustrative only, and is not a comprehensive list of all essential functions and duties performed by the occupant of this position. Factors such as regular and punctual attendance are not routinely listed in job descriptions, but are an essential function.
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