Data Systems Project Manager - Temporary (12 Months)

Description

Days Off: Saturday, Sunday
Shift: Office Day
Insurance Benefits: Medical (no premiums/payroll deductions for employee coverage), Dental, Life, Long-term Disability
Other Benefits: Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Flexible Spending Account (FSA), ORCA card subsidy, Paid Time Off (34 days per year), Retirement Plan

About DESC:

Recognized nationally as an innovator and leader in developing solutions to homelessness, DESC is a social services organization, supportive housing operator, and licensed behavioral health treatment provider focused on meeting the needs of people experiencing long-term homelessness and living with complex behavioral health and other medical conditions. Approximately 3,000 people are actively receiving services from DESC at any given point in time. Our vision is a community where all people are shown compassion, treated with dignity, and everyone has a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home.

DESC operates five shelter/emergency housing programs,19 permanent supportive housing facilities with over 1,750 units, several hundred additional scattered site apartments, and a range of behavioral health services including outpatient mental health and substance use disorder treatment, residential crisis stabilization, street outreach, mobile crisis response, and treatment for opioid use disorder.

JOB OVERVIEW

The Data Systems Project Manager provides cross-agency leadership, collaboration, and expertise in developing an agency-wide solution to DESC’s client-focused software needs. 

This 12-month time-limited position will lead DESC through a needs assessment across its affordable housing, behavioral health and medical programming. Key activities include scoping assessing options, making recommendations and procuring software solution(s) that meets the agency’s growing complexity, ensuring interoperability across client-facing programs (including behavioral health programs, housing and shelter programs), and improving data sharing internally and externally. DESC currently manages its programs through a robust but increasingly insufficient, internally developed and maintained data system which is augmented by many non-centralized and manual workflows and processes. Reducing risk and increasing efficiency will be a key indicator of success.

KEY DUTIES

• Facilitate the Project Steering Committee
• Undertake interviews, shadowing and other activities with key program staff to develop a documented scope of met and unmet software/data needs across all client-facing programs.
• Work closely with IT and software development staff to understand and document existing systems for client-related documentation and data storage.
• Work closely with compliance teams to understand and document requirements for behavioral health and housing/shelter programs.
• Evaluate options and make recommendations to the steering committee.
• Run procurement processes from solicitation to negotiation.
• Collaborate on project communication and change management
• Create an RFP (request for proposal) that outlines business needs as well as technical, compatibility and regulatory/compliance requirements.

Requirements

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant work experience
• 4 years’ project management experience and/or enterprise-level procurement management.
• Proven experience coordinating diverse stakeholders 
• Strong skills in project scoping, budgeting, and document drafting.
• Demonstrated knowledge of electronic health systems and/or software 
• Expert leadership and matrix management skills, with the ability to influence and motivate cross-functional teams.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to effectively communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences at all levels.
• Appropriate safeguarding and handling of confidential and proprietary information.
• Ability and desire to communicate and work effectively and appropriately with staff and vendors from various backgrounds and disciplines in person, on the phone, and via email.
• Ability to relate effectively to clients displaying a wide range of unpleasant and/or bizarre behaviors.
• Demonstrated respect for diversity and commitment to developing multicultural competency sensitivity.
• Subscribe to philosophy of cooperation and continuity across programs, and of consideration and respect for clients.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience procuring software for healthcare operations.
• Understanding of non-profit behavioral health and affordable housing fields.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification preferred.
• Experience negotiating contracts and vendor agreements.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

The physical demands 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 enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee will be required to sit, communicate with other employees, required to lift and carry items weighing up to 40 pounds and to operate computer hardware systems. Specific vision abilities required by the job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER:

DESC is committed to diversity in the workplace and promotes equal employment opportunities for all staff members and applicants. The Agency will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, caste, marital status, or the presence of any sensory, mental or physical disability in any employment practice, unless based on a bona fide occupational qualification. Minorities and veterans are encouraged to apply.