Senior Program Manager

The Planet Group is seeking a Senior Program Manager to join one of our well-known global pharmaceutical client. This person will report directly to the Commercial Lead responsible for developing the Content Tagging/Metadata Strategy and the Workstation that will allow the marketing platform to function.

• Pay: $89-94.81/hr depending on experience (W2 and benefit options
• Location: Hybrid in Mettawa, IL
• Duration: 18 mo to start (potential to go longer / convert)

Senior Program Manager Responsibilities:

• Lead the delivery of a large-scale, multi-workstream pharmaceutical marketing platform initiative within the Commercial HCP Marketing organization
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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

Senior Program Manager Qualifications:

• 8+ years of program or project management experience
• Marketing knowledge (familiarity with this business side of things)
• Familiarity with Jira and agile planning
• Basic familiarity with Veeva Promomats
• in pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences commercial operations preferred
• 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
• 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