Project Traffic Manager ST

The Project Traffic Manager is responsible for collaborating with the Desert Financial Intake Team to prioritize and facilitate intake work, ensuring the capture of business value and efficiencies. As a critical liaison between technical teams, business stakeholders, and leadership, the Project Traffic Manager drives transparency in workload distribution, ensuring projects align with business objectives and resource availability. They demonstrate strong leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and the ability to balance competing priorities while providing clear visibility into capacity, risks, and dependencies. They also demonstrate a keen understanding of IT service management principles, excellent organizational skills, and the ability to adapt to a dynamic work environment. The Project Traffic Manager also oversees regular reporting to enhance decision-making, risk mitigation, and strategic alignment.

What you will do here :

Transformational Leadership :

Work Intake & Prioritization

Collaborate with the Desert Financial Intake Team to assess and prioritize incoming work requests based on business impact and urgency. . Gather business and technical requirements as needed.

Develop and maintain intake workflows, ensuring clarity, efficiency, and alignment with strategic objectives.

Establish a standardized intake process, ensuring requests are properly vetted, documented, and assigned.

Track and manage the backlog of work requests, escalating priority conflicts when necessary.

Workload Coordination & Capacity Management

Work with STS Resource Managers to assign STS resources to participate in high-level solutioning and sizing activities. Monitor team capacity and resource availability to ensure balanced work distribution. lead solutioning and sizing meetings Including creation and distribution of meeting agendas and meeting notes

Act as the primary liaison between technical teams, business stakeholders, and leadership to provide visibility into work status, dependencies, and bottlenecks.

Facilitate regular workload planning and prioritization meetings to align incoming work with team bandwidth.

Implement capacity forecasting and workload tracking to optimize resource allocation

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Leadership

Build strong partnerships with IT teams, business units, and leadership to drive effective communication and collaboration.

Serve as a bridge between technical and non-technical teams, ensuring shared understanding of priorities, risks, and constraints.

Advocate for process improvements and implement best practices to enhance workflow efficiency and project execution.

Provide leadership in resolving conflicts related to project priorities, timelines, and resource constraints.

Risk & Issue Management

Proactively identify risks, issues, and dependencies impacting project execution and escalate them for resolution providing regular updates to stakeholders

Develop mitigation strategies to address workflow bottlenecks and improve overall process efficiency.

Ensure transparency in risks and issues through consistent reporting and stakeholder updates.

Reporting & Performance Tracking

Develop and maintain dashboards, reports, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track work intake, project progress, and team capacity. Maintain progress information in the ticketing system

Provide regular reporting to leadership, offering insights into work distribution, project pipeline status, and resourcing constraints.

Continuously evaluate and refine reporting methodologies to support data-driven decision-making.

Identify and implement continual process improvements to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Stay abreast of current workforce management, business analysis, and project methodology trends.

What you will need :

Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field preferred.

OR equivalent combination of education and experience required.

5+ years of experience in project coordination, workflow management, or work intake processes, preferably within IT required.

3+ years experience in Project management, leading software solution implementations. 1+ years experience working in a fast-paced environment, managing multiple small-medium complexity projects at once with minimal oversight required.

1+ years Experience in financial services or banking IT environments a plus preferred.

Demonstrated strong understanding of IT project management and business analysis methodologies required.

Expertise with both Waterfall and Agile project methodologies. Solid understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Software and Vendor "fit" assessment, as well as IT Service Provider systems required.

Strong expertise in capacity planning, resource management, and work intake governance required.

Demonstrated effective prioritization of tasks to meet project deadlines and objectives required.

Demonstrated understanding of risk management, and process optimization. Demonstrated ability to identify and implement process improvements to enhance efficiency and effectiveness required.

Strong analytical skills, with expertise in data visualization, dashboard creation, and reporting tools. Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret data and make informed decisions required.

Strong relationship-building skills required.

Proven ability to influence without authority and drive consensus on priorities. Confidence in leading small-medium sized meetings required.

Highly organized and detail-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment required.

Experience with Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel and Power Point, Project, SharePoint, and Visio) required.

Experience working with Business Requirement development / tracking and Atlassian JIRA, Resource Management and Ticketing systems a plus preferred.

Core preferred.

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

Project Management Professional (PMP)®

Specialized preferred.

Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP)

Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®

Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)®

PMO Certified Practitioner (PMO-CP)™

IIBA Certifications preferred.

Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®)

Agile Analysis Certification (AAC)

Scrum Alliance Certifications preferred.

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)

Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM

Certifications in Lean, Six Sigma, or process improvement methodologies a plus. preferred.

Certifications in IT service management (e.g., ITIL) are a plus. preferred.

We are proud to be an EEO / AA employer M / F / D / V. We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testing.

For additional information about our organization, careers, and benefits visit : http : / / www.desertfinancial.com / careers.