Senior IT Program Manager

About Avancer Consulting

Avancer Consulting is a boutique management consulting firm specializing in complex transformation, including regulatory, merger, and modernization programs in which execution and delivery are paramount. The firm's name derives from the French avancer, to advance, reflecting its purpose: to move client organizations toward their next strategic objectives.

Avancer serves clients across financial services, insurance, and healthcare, embedding senior practitioners directly within client teams to plan and deliver programs of significant scale and complexity. The firm's capabilities span program and project management, change management, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) integration, regulatory compliance and risk, and vendor management, with disciplined attention to cost efficiency throughout. Avancer also establishes and operates program management offices, undertakes project-based engagements, and provides fractional executive leadership drawn from genuine senior experience.

Avancer is distinguished by the seniority of its people. Its consultants are experienced, hands-on practitioners who have led complex, multi-workstream, multi-vendor programs from initiation through completion. Clients engage seasoned operators who bring structure to ambiguity and deliver measurable results, without the layered overhead of larger consulting firms.

Further information is available at www.avancerconsulting.com.

Position Summary

Avancer Consulting is seeking a Senior IT / Technical Program Manager to lead technology modernization programs in regulated healthcare, insurance, and other industries. This is a hands-on technical delivery role, not a coordination role. We are looking for someone who has personally owned system cutovers, data migrations, and integrations across the full technology stack, and who has the technical depth to lead engineering, architecture, and vendor teams.

The right person has taken enterprise systems from planning through go-live and stabilization, knows what a successful cutover requires, and applies practical, governed judgment on where emerging technologies including AI fit and where they do not.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Delivery (primary focus)

• Own end-to-end delivery of modernization programs: planning, build, integration, testing, cutover, go-live, and stabilization.

• Plan and run system cutovers, including go/no-go criteria, sequencing, dress rehearsals, rollback plans, reconciliation, and business sign-off.

• Lead data migration and integration work, including source-to-target mapping, ETL, data quality, and data governance.

• Command of the software testing lifecycle sufficient to own test strategy and quality gates, unit, integration, functional, end-to-end, regression, smoke, performance, and acceptance, including planning coverage, sequencing test phases, and defining exit criteria in partnership with QA and engineering. User acceptance testing alone is not sufficient.

• Manage integrations across SaaS and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, and across on-premises and cloud environments.

Program Management

• Manage scope, schedule, budget, dependencies, and RAID across multi-vendor, multi-workstream programs.

• Work directly with front-end, back-end, data, infrastructure, and security teams, and with third-party vendors.

• Run program cadences and executive reporting; manage vendors against scope, deliverables, service levels, and budget.

Modernization & AI Judgment

• Advise on legacy modernization approaches, including on-premises to cloud migration and platform consolidation.

• Apply practical, governed judgment on where AI fits in a modernization program and where it introduces risk, in line with client and regulatory policy and deferring to the business and IT teams on adoption decisions.

Qualifications

Required

• 10+ years managing complex IT or technology programs, including personal ownership of at least one full system cutover or go-live from planning through stabilization.

• Demonstrated hands-on experience with data migration and integration: source-to-target mapping, ETL, and data governance.

• Working knowledge of the full technology stack (front-end, back-end, data, infrastructure) sufficient to lead technical teams credibly, not manage around them.

• Experience integrating SaaS and COTS products, and delivering across both on-premises and cloud environments.

• Experience with software testing lifecycle sufficient to own test strategy and quality gates, unit, integration, functional, end-to-end, regression, smoke, performance, and acceptance, including planning coverage, sequencing test phases, and defining exit criteria in partnership with QA and engineering. User acceptance testing alone is not sufficient.

• Experience in healthcare, insurance, or another regulated environment.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent additional experience.

Preferred

• Direct experience with exchange and marketplace programs.

• PMP, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), or Professional Scrum Master (PSM).

• Practical experience applying or governing AI and GenAI tools in a regulated environment, in line with client and regulatory policy.

• Familiarity with legacy sytems and subsystems and their modernization.

• Experience with Atlassian tools (Jira and Confluence) and enterprise scheduling or reporting platforms (MS Project or Monday or Planview).

Success Profile

The successful candidate has personally led complex system cutovers and data migrations, understands the engineering and data work well enough to lead those teams directly, applies sound judgment on modernization and AI, and delivers in a regulated, high-visibility environment.

Engagement & Location

Contract, 1099 or corp-to-corp. On-site in the Sacramento, CA area, consistent with client business hours; relocation-willing candidates welcome. Some hybrid flexibility by assignment.