Finance Transformation Project Manager

Job Description

Reporting to the Director of Data Strategy & Analytics, the Finance Transformation Project Manager works across four primary areas — Accounting, Financial Operations, Financial Systems, and Data Strategy & Analytics — as well as other business and technology teams as needed. The role builds relationships across these areas, identifies opportunities for improvement, connects the right people and capabilities, and coordinates initiatives that span organizational boundaries. The Chief Financial Officer serves as executive sponsor for the broader Finance transformation portfolio.

This role is expected to operate with a high degree of initiative, curiosity, independence, and judgment. The successful candidate will proactively build relationships, ask questions, identify opportunities, and help turn loosely defined problems into structured initiatives. The Director of Data Strategy & Analytics provides leadership, coaching, and guidance, while the Project Manager is expected to take ownership of navigating the organization and moving initiatives forward.

Success requires exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, structured problem solving, sound judgment, organizational awareness, and the ability to influence and create momentum without relying on formal authority. The successful candidate will also be comfortable embracing new technology and using modern project-management, collaboration, automation, and AI tools as part of their day-to-day work.

Dewberry is a leading, market-facing professional services firm with more than 60 locations and 2,500 professionals nationwide. What sets us apart from our competitors are our people. At Dewberry, we seek out exceptional talent and strive to deliver the highest quality of services to our clients. Whether you’re an experienced professional or a new graduate, you’ll have the chance to collaborate with the best and brightest and work on innovative and complex projects at the forefront of the industry. Our commitment to excellence stems from our personal integrity and from other defining attributes, which we call “Dewberry at Work,” that have inspired our employees to be successful for more than a half-century.

Responsibilities

1. Finance Process & Technology Transformation

- Build relationships across Finance to understand priorities, workflows, pain points, and emerging needs, and proactively identify opportunities rather than waiting for assignment.

- Identify manual activities, inefficient handoffs, bottlenecks, and recurring problems, and evaluate opportunities to improve day-to-day work as well as planning, forecasting, analysis, and business support.

- Help stakeholders define problems, desired outcomes, requirements, dependencies, and measures of success before solutions are developed.

- Develop a working understanding of the ERP, EPM, CRM, HR, BI, and related platforms supporting Finance — sufficient to connect business needs with the appropriate technical experts and to translate operational needs into clear requirements.

- Coordinate initiatives involving process, system, data, or technology change, including requirements gathering, testing, validation, rollout, communication, training, and adoption.

- Identify dependencies across systems, processes, teams, and initiatives early enough for them to be addressed, and maintain visibility into commitments, decisions, and risks.

- Recognize when an issue requires a business decision and bring the appropriate leaders and subject-matter experts together to resolve it.

- Actively support responsible adoption of AI and automation across Finance by helping teams understand new capabilities, identify practical use cases, and incorporate approved tools into existing workflows — approaching emerging technology with curiosity and a willingness to experiment, learn, and adapt while recognizing appropriate governance, security, and human-review requirements

- Translate technical concepts into understandable business language and business needs into productive discussions with technical teams.

2. Business Knowledge & Process Mapping

Help establish and maintain a structured and sustainable understanding of how Finance operates so that institutional knowledge can support process improvement, transformation, analytics, automation, and AI initiatives.

- Facilitate discovery with subject-matter experts to understand and document how important Finance processes operate in practice.

- Document and map end-to-end processes, roles, terminology, business rules, systems, dependencies, decision points, controls, and exceptions across Finance functions and information flows.

- Identify conflicting terminology, undocumented business rules, unclear ownership, process gaps, and areas where important institutional knowledge is concentrated with individual employees.

- Help establish practical standards, tools, and maintenance practices for process maps, process inventories, business glossaries, and related organizational knowledge.

- Facilitate validation of documented processes and business knowledge with the appropriate functional leaders and subject-matter experts.

- Partner with Data Strategy & Analytics to provide validated business and process knowledge that can inform semantic models, enterprise ontology, analytics, automation, and AI capabilities.

3. Cross-Functional Project Leadership & Portfolio Management

- Turn loosely defined problems into structured initiatives with clear objectives, stakeholders, responsibilities, dependencies, timelines, and next steps.

- Exercise sound judgment in determining which issues can be advanced independently and which require leadership involvement, working with the Director of Data Strategy & Analytics, CFO, and appropriate functional leaders to align significant initiatives with broader Finance priorities.

- Build consensus where possible and surface competing priorities or unresolved decisions when leadership involvement is needed.

- Use ClickUp or comparable project and work-management platforms to create and maintain project plans, tasks, milestones, owners, dependencies, risks, decisions, and follow-up activities, keeping information accurate and current enough that stakeholders have reliable visibility into status and next steps.

- Develop dashboards, portfolio views, and other mechanisms that provide leadership with clear visibility across initiatives.Establish practical standards for project documentation, status reporting, and risk management that create accountability without introducing unnecessary administrative burden.

- Use automation and AI where appropriate to reduce manual project administration, improve reporting, identify risks, and summarize activity, preserving more time for stakeholder engagement and problem solving.

- Keep initiatives moving when responsibility crosses organizational boundaries, influencing through credibility, relationships, communication, and sound reasoning rather than positional authority.

4. Change Leadership, Communication & Relationship Management

- Build trusted relationships across Finance and the broader organization, listening actively and understanding different perspectives before recommending a path forward.

- Create an environment where stakeholders feel comfortable raising concerns and challenging assumptions, and navigate disagreements constructively toward practical paths forward.

- Understand organizational dynamics and adapt communication and approach to executives, technical specialists, business leaders, and employees performing day-to-day work.

- Explain the purpose, impact, and value of proposed changes, recognizing resistance or organizational concerns early and helping teams work through them.

- Facilitate productive meetings and working sessions that result in clear decisions, responsibilities, and next steps.

- Develop clear, concise presentations, project updates, recommendations, and decision materials.

- Build credibility through reliability, discretion, follow-through, and sound judgment.

Required Skills & Required Experience

Required

- Bachelor’s degree required.

- 7+ years of experience in project or program management, business operations, transformation, process improvement, change management, consulting, or another cross-functional role.

- Demonstrated experience leading or coordinating initiatives involving multiple teams and stakeholders.

- Exceptional interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills.

- Demonstrated ability to build trusted relationships across organizational levels and professional disciplines.

- Ability to influence, create accountability, and move initiatives forward without relying on formal authority.

- Strong critical-thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving skills.

- Ability to take ambiguous or loosely defined problems, ask effective questions, and develop a structured path forward.

- Experience documenting and mapping business processes, including facilitating discovery with subject-matter experts and translating institutional knowledge into structured, maintainable documentation.

- Strong organizational skills and demonstrated follow-through.

- Ability to manage multiple initiatives, stakeholders, dependencies, and priorities simultaneously.

- Demonstrated proficiency with modern project and work-management platforms such as ClickUp, Asana, Monday.com, Smartsheet, Jira, or comparable tools.

- Ability and willingness to use AI-enabled tools as part of day-to-day work, including research, communication, project management, documentation, analysis, and process improvement.

- Intellectual curiosity and demonstrated willingness to learn and adopt emerging technologies rather than relying exclusively on established ways of working.

- Comfort learning unfamiliar processes, systems, and technologies.

- Initiative and independence combined with sound judgment regarding when guidance, collaboration, or escalation is appropriate.

Preferred

- Experience establishing or maintaining business-process repositories, knowledge-management practices, business glossaries, process inventories, or similar organizational knowledge structures.

- Experience supporting Finance, Accounting, business operations, or enterprise transformation initiatives.

- Experience in professional services, architecture, engineering, consulting, or another project-based environment.

- Experience with process improvement, organizational change, or technology-enabled transformation.

- Exposure to ERP, EPM, CRM, HR, BI, or other enterprise platforms.

- Experience working across business and technology organizations.

- Experience using AI or automation to improve productivity, project execution, business processes, or team workflows.

- Experience helping teams adopt new technologies or ways of working.

- Experience preparing materials, recommendations, or decision support for senior leadership.

- Project management, process-improvement, or change-management certification is a plus but not required.

What Success Looks Like

- Bring structure and momentum to complex, cross-functional Finance initiatives.

- Build credibility across Accounting, Financial Operations, Financial Systems, Data Strategy & Analytics, and senior leadership.

- Anticipate issues, connect the right people, and surface decisions or risks before they stall progress.

- Operate independently while knowing when leadership involvement is needed.

- Become a trusted source of context across Finance — understanding what is underway, why it matters, who is involved, and what needs attention next.

*At this time, Dewberry will not sponsor a new applicant for work authorization.

*Dewberry is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, gender identity or sexual orientation.

*Only recipients of an offer of employment from Dewberry, will be required to submit to a background screening which may include, but is not limited to, employment verification, educational and other credential verification, driving record check, criminal background check, and an investigative consumer report. These screenings will be conducted by Dewberry’s background vendor of choice and will be conducted in compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local law.

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Salary Range

The projected range for this position is $101,000-$140,000 annually in our Fairfax, VA office. Depending upon other factors, i.e., skills, experience, location, market conditions, the range may vary slightly.