[Hiring] Director – Project Management Office & Kantata Owner @CrossCountry Consulting

Role Description

CrossCountry has no PMO today. This role is the firm's first dedicated PMO leader and the senior business owner of Kantata, where our delivery process lives: how engagements are scoped, forecast, changed, reported, and closed. We are not seeking enterprise PMO bureaucracy; we want sound delivery practices and a more intuitive, user-centric platform.

Kantata is one of our largest technology investments and connects to Salesforce, Workday, Intacct, Adaptive, and the enterprise data warehouse (EDW). It has replaced a monthly cycle of Excel and Word submissions, but we are not yet getting its full value: the user experience lags, native capabilities sit unused, and Finance has carried business ownership on top of its core work. The focus is optimizing an established platform, not implementing a new one. You will bring a product-owner mindset, project management expertise, command of professional services economics, and the standing to push back on changes that add complexity without proportional value.

Scope: The Engagement Lifecycle

• Pre-Engagement: Pricing and margin modeling, product template setup, standard cost validation, bookings configuration
• Engagement Setup: Project structure, resource profiles, revenue product configuration, GL code assignment
• Active Delivery: Forecast management, fixed fee monitoring, change orders, offshore quality control, PM standards
• Month-End Close: Revenue recognition review, forecast vs. actuals, variance alerts, dashboard sign-off
• Reporting & Governance: Leadership dashboards, practice support tickets, Change Control Board (CCB), data model audits, PM guidance

What You'll Do:

• Define decision rights, escalation paths, and interfaces with Finance, CITS, RevOps, Accounting & Billing, Staffing, and the Global Delivery Center.
• Publish and own delivery standards adapted from PMI/PMBOK and built into Kantata workflows; Engagement Owners own execution.
• Govern SOW completeness, change orders and cumulative overages, ETC/EAC forecast quality (with particular rigor on fixed fee), RAG status, risk registers, AR aging, and closeout with a lessons-learned repository.
• Transition forecast accountability to Engagement Owners, and build a Community of Practice that coaches them on difficult client conversations; serve as escalation point for engagements at commercial or relationship risk.
• Partner with Service Line and Global Delivery Center leaders on offshore quality control and cross-time-zone practices, and standardize methodologies (leveraging Smartsheet), including responsible AI-enabled practices per firm policy.
• Track delivery KPIs: budget adherence, change order conversion, fixed fee recognition accuracy, AR aging, training completion.
• Serve as accountable senior business owner and Executive Sponsor of the Kantata Council, with authority to lead, sign off on, and conclude changes across the engagement lifecycle.
• Own a multi-year roadmap with CITS, prioritizing user-experience, operational, executive, and reporting needs and communicating trade-offs clearly.
• Represent the practice and end users at the CCB, and partner with CITS on the vendor relationship and new releases.
• Track platform health: feature adoption, month-end data quality, administrative time, and user satisfaction.
• Establish structured feedback channels and use them to prioritize the highest-friction workflows; simplify setup, forecasting, and change orders while preserving the data reporting depends on.
• Refine product templates and setup defaults (including staffing mix), and reactivate underused capabilities: delivery portfolios, manual profiling, milestone management, and fixed fee tools.
• Give Service Line and Market Leaders real-time visibility into engagement progress, portfolio health, and resource allocation.
• Own the practice support model (ticket triage, service levels, routing) and consolidate training and reference materials into one program that explains commercial and reporting consequences, embedded in onboarding.
• Maintain command of integrations (Salesforce, Workday, Concur, Intacct, Smartsheet, Power BI, EDW) and partner with CITS and Finance on the EDW build.
• Co-lead the annual core data model review (Markets, Service Lines, Capabilities, Products), challenging the volume of change based on reporting continuity, not technical feasibility alone.
• Own business rules for revenue configuration, utilization, ABR, GL coding, and sales tax (Finance sign-off), including setup rules for each product type (T&M, Fixed Fee, Subscription, Minimum Spend, Resale, Pass-Through, Revenue Adjustments, Non-Billable, Internal); validate new products before go-live.
• Oversee standard cost and its effect on project margin, the Workday attributes driving gross margin, and utilization rules, including distortions such as acquired-firm hires entering Kantata early.
• Engage at the start of every acquisition, and ensure structural changes (new service lines, market reallocations) are solutioned through governance, not top-down.
• With Finance, approve firmwide leadership dashboards built on Kantata data and manage mid-year adjustments; run a monthly pre-close data hygiene program to reduce Finance intervention.
• Oversee revenue recognition monitoring across Fixed Fee, T&M, and Subscription, catching variances before close, and lead resolution of fixed fee pain points.
• Advance pricing and margin modeling, including more accurate generic resource rates by service line and market.
• Serve as senior escalation point for complex setup, fixed fee anomalies, change orders, and acquisition integration, applying disciplined judgment on materiality; bridge the practice and Finance on reporting.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, business, information systems, or a related field.
• 12+ years in professional services (consulting, advisory, or accounting) in operations, finance, business systems, or delivery leadership, including 4+ years leading teams and cross-functional programs.
• Proven project management expertise from leading a PMO, delivery function, or large engagement portfolios, including earned value and ETC/EAC methods.
• Hands-on Kantata (formerly Mavenlink) experience as business owner, administrator, or senior power user; PSA or ERP implementation or optimization experience with working knowledge of integrations.
• Command of professional services economics: ASC 606 revenue recognition (fixed fee, T&M, subscription), utilization, ABR, standard cost, margin, and GL structures.
• Record of improving enterprise platform adoption and owning firmwide data governance or business rules in a complex, multi-practice environment.
• Track record driving behavior change among senior practitioners using change management methods (e.g., Prosci).
• Executive presence, with the judgement to challenge senior leaders with data and to decide on firm's behalf.

Preferred & Key Performance Measures

• Prior PMO leadership in a mid-to-large professional services firm; PE-backed, acquisitive environment experience; offshore or global delivery experience.
• Familiarity with Salesforce, Workday, Concur, Intacct, Smartsheet, Tableau or Power BI, and EDW/BI tooling.
• PMP, PgMP, or equivalent; MBA or CPA a plus.

• Prioritized Kantata roadmap agreed with CITS, Finance, and Service Line and Market Leaders, with measurable UX improvements delivered.
• Highest-friction workflows simplified, product templates refined, and underused capabilities (e.g., delivery portfolios) reactivated.
• Month-end data hygiene program operating, with measurable reduction in Finance intervention at close.
• Consolidated Engagement Owner training program launched; delivery standards published, built into Kantata, and embedded in onboarding.
• Forecast maintenance transitioned to Engagement Owners; demonstrable progress on pricing and margin modeling.

Benefits

• Comprehensive healthcare options, including medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Flexible spending accounts.
• 401(k) with company matching.
• Generous parental and maternity leave policies.
• Technology stipends.
• Wellness reimbursement programs.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)

CrossCountry provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment and believes that respect and fair treatment are critical to creating a productive and inclusive workplace. As an equal opportunity employer, CrossCountry is fully committed to comply with all federal, state, and local laws and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability, pregnancy, genetics, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity or expression or any other protected characteristic.