Senior IT Project Manager

Aprés Nail has innovated the nail market as the creator of Gel-X. Our mission is to improve nail industry standards and the lives of nail artists by providing innovative products that help both them and their services thrive. Our nails are seen everywhere, from the Met Gala to the Oscars to your local nail salon. The Gel-X revolution is real, and we're looking for our next great team member!

Aprés runs company-wide projects that cross Operations, Finance, Product, Sales, Marketing, and IT — new systems, new processes, new product programs. Today one project manager tracks that whole portfolio, and department leaders sponsor projects on top of running their own teams. As the number of projects grows, delivery depends on who is available rather than on a repeatable process.

This role runs cross-functional projects from start to finish, including IT-led initiatives that require close coordination with onsite business users, technical teams, and offshore developers across time zones. It owns the plan, the schedule, the decision record, and the reporting for the projects it is assigned. It holds other departments to their commitments without taking over their work.

Key Responsibilities

Project Delivery

• Run assigned company projects end to end: charter, scope, schedule, budget, risk, and closeout — including projects that require discovery, requirements, technical planning, testing, rollout, and post-launch support.
• Write the project charter. Get the executive sponsor and the business owner to approve it before work starts.
• Break each project into tasks with one named owner and one date. Track them in Asana; where a project includes a technical build, track that build in Jira using epics, stories, and tasks.
• Develop and maintain project plans, schedules, RAID logs (risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies), and resource forecasts.
• Raise a blocked item to the sponsor within two business days. Do not let it sit.

Cross-Department and Technical Coordination

• Act as the single point of contact for each assigned project.
• Run the project meeting: agenda before, decisions and actions after. Facilitate project ceremonies as needed — kickoffs, standups, sprint planning, demos, retrospectives, and UAT sessions.
• Record every project decision with the date, the decision, and the person who made it.
• Translate business requirements into clear, actionable technical plans; support scope definition, triage questions, and validate proposed solutions with technical teams.
• Work with IT when a project needs a system build. IT tracks the build in Jira and the PMO tracks the project in Asana. Link the two. Do not duplicate them.
• Coordinate effectively with offshore development teams across time zones (up to roughly a 12-hour difference); ensure clear handoffs, timely updates, and removal of blockers.
• Coordinate system integrations and data flows across internal and third-party applications; support integration testing plans and cutover activities.

Intake and Prioritization

• Manage the PMO intake board in Asana. Review each new request, ask the questions needed to make it clear, and prepare it for prioritization.
• Bring a prioritization recommendation to the President with the reasoning: business value, effort, dependencies, and risk.

Status Reporting

• Publish a written status for each assigned project on a set schedule: what moved, what is late, what decision is needed, and who has to make it.
• Report to leadership by exception. Escalate what needs a decision. Do not summarize everything.
• Maintain the portfolio view so leadership can see all active projects in one place.
• Define and track success metrics for each project; deliver post-implementation reviews with lessons learned.

Vendor and Partner Coordination

• Coordinate implementation partners, consultants, and software vendors on assigned projects: schedule, deliverables, and open items.
• Hold vendors to the written scope. Tell the sponsor about a scope change before agreeing to it.
• Support vendor coordination and IT procurement as needed — software and services evaluation, quotes, onboarding, and renewals.

Process, Documentation, and Change Management

• Maintain the PMO templates: charter, status report, risk log, and closeout.
• Maintain internal documentation in Confluence for IT-related projects (process guides, FAQs, project specs, SOPs) and ensure knowledge transfer.
• Drive change management and adoption on projects that introduce new tools or processes: identify impacts, create training plans, conduct training sessions, and monitor post-rollout usage.
• Confirm that each project hands a written procedure to the team that will run the process after go-live. A project is not closed until that team can run it without the project manager.
• Write in plain language. Most readers are not technical, and many read English as a second language.

Qualifications and Requirements

• 5+ years managing cross-functional projects. At least two of those years on projects involving a business system such as an ERP, ecommerce platform, or warehouse system.
• Experience running a project from charter through go-live and closeout, not just tracking tasks.
• Able to hold a department leader to a commitment directly, escalating only when that doesn't work.
• Strong with Asana or a similar work management tool. Able to build and maintain boards, templates, and reporting without help.
• Technically fluent: comfortable reading specs, understanding system behavior, and communicating with developers, QA, and business users; able to tell the difference between a technical constraint and a preference.
• Experience driving user training, change management, and adoption of new tools and processes.
• Able to coordinate across time zones, supporting teams with a roughly 12-hour time difference.
• Clear, concise written English with strong organization, follow-up, and documentation skills; able to manage multiple priorities without losing details.

Preferred Qualifications

• Consumer packaged goods, beauty, or ecommerce experience
• Experience on NetSuite or Shopify projects
• A project management certification, such as PMP or PRINCE2
• Bilingual proficiency in Chinese and English
• Exposure to system integrations, backend architecture concepts, or SaaS platforms
• Hands-on experience with Jira (ticketing and sprint management) and Confluence (documentation and knowledge base).