Project Manager

About Our Organization:

At Youth Guidance, we believe that no matter what challenges a young person faces, they are more likely to succeed when they have caring adults in their lives. Our highly-trained staff guides kids to overcome the life and academic challenges facing Chicago’s youth. We meet kids where they are — physically and emotionally — to help them focus on their education, make positive choices, and remain on the right path toward life success.

Founded in 1924  today Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs serving more than 8,500 youth while touching the lives of more than 14,000 youth, parents, teachers, and community members.

Position Summary**:** Act as a resource on the infrastructure/engineering team to oversee the planning, executing, and delegating of responsibilities related to the department and the organization’s technology pursuits and goals. Ensure that projects are delivered smoothly while developing sustainability, continuity, and redundancy plans as projects come to fruition.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Supports cybersecurity, identity & access management, network administration, business continuity, and infrastructure team while working bi-directionally with support team leadership and staff.
• Primarily responsible for the requirements gathering, planning, implementation, business impact analyses, documentation, and closure of small-, medium- and enterprise-level technology projects for the agency.
• Works to bridge connectivity and data continuity between all sanctioned enterprise software and systems through middleware and/or API.
• Acts as a leader working closely with Data Strategy Team to support client data, input, and reporting systems, provision access under HIPAA/FERPA framework, and to design servers and repositories that adapt to the team’s evolving needs.
• Develops and reviews policies & procedures regarding governance, maintenance, security, disaster recovery & business continuity, and risk avoidance.
• Guides Level 2 resolution to problems escalated by the Support Team up to and including root cause analysis and change management.
• Supports offshore team to provision access to local and cloud resources in alignment with procedural guidelines.
• Assists with expansion planning and ongoing support for new programming locations.
• Develops strategies for professional development, training, and growth for a high-performing technology team.
• Provide backup and expertise to members of the Engineering Team as required.
• Maintain documentation, and orderly, up-to-date records and files using approved practices and record-keeping systems.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education/Experience/Training

• Project management certification (or requisite experience) utilizing Waterfall or Agile methodologies
• B.A. or B.S. in a technical field or a relevant combination of education and experience.
• Minimum of 3 years of management experience preferably direct supervision of information technology professionals.
• Experience using Microsoft Office applications, operating systems (Windows/Windows Server), and networking.
• Minimum of 3 years experience with Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Hyper-V or Veeam, Microsoft Office365, Microsoft Azure
• 2 or more years of experience with cloud-based identity management environments and SSO.
• Minimum of 3 years experience with installing hardware/software in a Microsoft Windows or hybrid environment.
• Minimum of 3 years experience with Layer 2 and Layer 3 Networking within industry best practices.
• ITILv3/4 Foundation Certification
• Hands-on technical experience working with VPN technologies (IPSec, SSL VPN, etc.).

Skills/Abilities

• Excellent client/colleague orientation, written, verbal & presentation communication skills, and ownership & quality of work
• Leadership and demonstrated ability to effectively train audiences of varying abilities and skillsets
• Demonstrated ability to document and explain network topologies
• Ability and motivation to diagnose and troubleshoot IT issues
• General understanding of VoIP equipment
• Knowledgeable in application transport and network infrastructure protocols and possess an understanding of how to support these applications/protocols when accessed through VPN and firewall appliances
• Understanding of remote access methods and systems, firewalls, encryption, authentication, and authorization technology
• Minimum of 3 years of InfoTech project management experience

Core Competencies

• Communication: Uses effective written and oral communication with internal staff, teams, and community served; demonstrates empathy and listening
• Client orientation: Recognizes needs of diverse stakeholders and approaches relationships with a service orientation, to ultimately maximize the impact
• Equity mindset: Understands and is committed to goals of equity, consistently brings an equity mindset to the organization’s work and workplace
• Growth mindset: Views growth as important for personal and professional development; seeks out opportunities to expand skills, even if the change is required, demonstrates curiosity and eagerness to learn
• Ownership and quality of work: Effectively manages own work, and the work of the team to ensure delivery of high-quality work
• Supervisory skills: Effectively manages and develops others
• Mission drive: Demonstrates commitment to the missing of the organization as a whole and alignment with organization values

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

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• This job operates in a professional office environment, school setting, and working with the public, COVID-19 vaccination is required
• Occasional local and national travel

What Youth Guidance offers:

We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:

• A hiring incentive of $250 for part-time and $750 for full-time
• A retention incentive of $250 after 90 days of continuous service.
• A competitive benefit package. Even though healthcare costs have gone up, we have not passed along those increases to our staff.
• If you are pursuing your social services licensure, we can help you by providing licensure test study support. Licensing test reimbursement. Assistance in attaining licensure supervision hours.

DEI Statement

At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and recognize them as empowered leaders, problem-solvers, and experts of their own experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that many systems and institutions meant to support youth are inequitable and unjust.

As such, we are committed to advancing DE&I through our words and our actions, both internally and externally, by:

• Strengthening cultural competence as well as policies, practices, and organizational structures that foster belonging and leverage the unique backgrounds and talents of staff;
• Offering youth-centered programs that are accessible and responsive to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, language, and cultural and religious beliefs and practices;
• Influencing systems that youth, their families, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEI in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people.