Senior Program Manager (Lake Forest)

Title: Senior Program Manager
Length of Contract: 18 months
Location/Site: Mettawa, IL (Onsite)

*Top 3-5skills*:
a. Multi-workstream program management (building/owning integrated program plans, milestones, dependencies, cadences, risk/issue management, escalation).
b. Cross-functional stakeholder leadership & accountability (driving alignment across IT, Analytics, Marketing, Medical, Omnichannel, agencies; following up and escalating constructively).
c. Jira + Agile delivery management (managing epics/stories, sprint planning, backlog hygiene, requirements tracking across technical and non-technical teams).
d. Process + governance documentation in regulated environments (version-controlled SOPs/workflows, approval/change management, auditable decision trails).
e. Pharma commercial/HCP omnichannel marketing domain knowledge (content metadata/tagging strategy, journey orchestration concepts, CRM/content platforms like Veeva/Salesforce, and analytics/data literacy).

Position Overview:
The client is seeking a Senior Program Manager to lead the delivery of a large-scale, multi-workstream pharmaceutical marketing platform initiative within the Commercial HCP Marketing organization. This role reports directly to the Commercial Lead responsible for developing our Content Tagging/Metadata Strategy and the Workstation that will allow the marketing platform to function. The role serves as the operational program management for one of these two workstreams.

This is a senior-level, independent contract role designed for an experienced program manager who can contribute immediately with minimal ramp time. The ideal candidate excels at managing complex, cross-functional programs in a regulated pharmaceutical environment — driving accountability, accelerating decision velocity, and ensuring every workstream moves forward with precision and documented rationale.
The Senior Program Manager will own milestone tracking, cross-functional stakeholder coordination, deliverable accountability, process documentation, and the development of scalable documentation frameworks that protect program momentum and organizational knowledge.

Primary Responsibilities:
Multi-Workstream Program Management:
• Own end-to-end program management across all active and future workstreams, maintaining a master program plan with clearly defined milestones, owners, interdependencies, decision gates, and escalation triggers.
• Run structured workstream cadences — facilitating working sessions, driving agendas, capturing actions, and ensuring accountability across all program participants.
• Maintain a centralized program dashboard providing real-time visibility into workstream health, milestone status, open items, and upcoming decision gates for senior leadership and key stakeholders.
• Manage Jira program board — coordinating Epic and User Story progression, sprint planning, backlog hygiene, and requirements documentation in partnership with technical and non-technical teams.
• Proactively identify risks, blockers, and dependency conflicts across workstreams and surface them to the program lead with clearly documented recommended resolution paths.

Deliverable Tracking & Stakeholder Accountability:
• Maintain a comprehensive deliverable tracker across all workstreams — logging committed deliverables, owners, due dates, completion status, and any delays with documented rationale.
• Actively track and follow up on deliverables and decisions owed by cross-functional colleagues — including IT, Analytics APEX, and Functional Leads across the organization — ensuring no workstream is stalled without a documented explanation.
• When delays occur, formally document the source of the delay, the rationale provided by the responsible party, the impact on downstream workstreams, and the agreed path forward — creating a clear, auditable record of program accountability.
• Escalate unresolved delays to the program lead with full documentation of the delay history, stakeholder responses, and recommended escalation options.
• Coordinate open item resolution — scheduling working sessions with the appropriate decision owners, tracking response timelines, and ensuring decisions are made, documented, and communicated to all affected parties.

Cross-Functional Stakeholder Coordination & Feedback Documentation:
• Serve as the primary coordination point across a broad cross-functional stakeholder group — including IT, Analytics, Marketing, Medical Affairs, Omnichannel Strategy, and external agency partners
• Capture, organize, and distribute stakeholder feedback from working sessions, reviews, and decision meetings — ensuring all inputs are documented, attributed, and version-controlled
• Maintain a formal feedback and decision log across all workstreams — recording what feedback was provided, by whom, when, and how it was resolved or incorporated into program direction
• Ensure that cross-functional colleagues' requirements, concerns, and constraints are formally documented so that program design decisions reflect a complete and auditable picture of stakeholder input
• Coordinate and document alignment sessions with functional leads to confirm requirements, validate design decisions, and capture sign-off — creating a traceable record that protects program integrity and compliance

Process Documentation & Scaling Frameworks:
• Own the creation, maintenance, and version control of all program process documentation — including governance procedures, approval workflows, change management processes, and workstream operating procedures.
• Translate decisions made in working sessions into clear, structured process documentation that is immediately actionable by technical and non-technical teams.
• Design and maintain a documentation framework built for organizational scaling — enabling future workstreams, brands, and functional areas to onboard using structured, replicable playbooks.
• Build program onboarding documentation so that new stakeholders and future headcount can be brought up to speed independently, without requiring direct time investment from the program lead.
• Develop and maintain a centralized program knowledge repository — housing all decisions, rationale, process documents, governance records, stakeholder feedback logs, and workstream outputs in a single, organized, accessible location.

Required Qualifications:
Experience:
• 8+ years of program or project management experience in pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences commercial operations.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple concurrent workstreams with complex cross-functional dependencies in a regulated environment.
• Proven ability to build and maintain program plans, milestone trackers, deliverable logs, and stakeholder accountability frameworks.
• Experience owning Jira program boards — managing Epics, User Stories, sprint planning, and backlog coordination across technical and non-technical teams.
• Strong track record of creating process documentation and scaling frameworks that enable organizational growth and protect institutional knowledge.