Project Leader (Senior) - Smals
Description
SMALS seeks a Senior Project Leader for a complex IT project in the HR domain. The project involves several institutions and numerous business and technical stakeholders. A preliminary study has been completed, and the project is entering initiation and delivery. The leader will refine scope, structure the project organisation and oversee implementation.
The role carries operational responsibility under a Chain Project Leader and a Chain Service Manager. It covers scope, planning, development budget, resource efficiency, risks, dependencies and development quality. Daily coordination and reporting connect stakeholders and distributed teams. The leader must create structure while balancing business objectives, technical constraints, governance and operational delivery.
The assignment is full time and hybrid at Avenue Fonsny, 20 in Brussels. The advertised duration is 26 months, with an ASAP start and an end date of 31 December 2028. Proven complex IT project leadership and government or large-enterprise stakeholder management are required. French and Dutch requirements differ between the narrative and structured fields; English active knowledge is listed in the structured fields.
Top Reasons to Apply
Complex project leadership
Multi-institutional collaboration
HR technology delivery
Long assignment horizon
Hybrid Brussels working
Detailed Responsibilities and Skills
Additional Responsibilities
- Maintain daily stakeholder contact about ongoing project progress.
- Provide effective reporting.
- Discuss potential problems with colleagues and the manager.
- Contribute to project go/no-go decisions.
- Detect and proactively report team staffing needs.
- Define operational department, service or section objectives in line with strategic objectives; communicate them and agree individual objectives with colleagues.
- Motivate the development team and strengthen team spirit through daily contact, attention to needs and concerns, two-way management communication and team activities.
General skills — mandatory
- Proven experience managing complex IT projects.
- Master scope, planning, budget, resources, risks, quality and governance.
- Experience managing projects with multiple stakeholders with differing interests and priorities.
- Lead a decentralised project team whose members and expertise span different organisations or stakeholders.
- Turn a high-level scope into a concrete, structured and manageable project organisation.
- Understand business challenges and technical aspects, particularly system integrations and dependencies.
- Inform colleagues correctly, individually and collectively, using meetings and reports.
- Monitor colleagues’ daily activities.
- Discuss problems with team members.
- Provide advice and explain new decisions.
- Identify and report training needs to the business architect/analyst; the source contains truncated wording for training.
- Assist the business architect/analyst in defining individual objectives.
- Support new colleagues.
- Understand deliverable content and manage analyses.
- Examine business needs, analyse problems and study existing situations with business owners.
- Develop data, process, behaviour and information analyses and schedules with functional analysts.
- Present results.
- Manage and propose improvements in work quality, deadlines and efficiency.
- Experience with Agile methods and collaboration with multidisciplinary teams.
- Excellent communication ability.
- Excellent coordination ability.
- Excellent negotiation ability.
- Excellent stakeholder management ability.
- Work autonomously.
- Work in a structured manner.
- Take a pragmatic approach.
- Be results oriented.
- Good active French knowledge; structured language field specifies Native.
- Good active Dutch knowledge; structured language field specifies Native.
- Proven stakeholder management in a governmental or large-enterprise context is mandatory.
- Structured role: confirmed IT Project Manager; most recent experience may be any time.
- Structured language requirement: Dutch at Native level; stronger than the description’s good active knowledge.
- Structured language requirement: English at Active knowledge level.
- Structured language requirement: French at Native level; stronger than the description’s good active knowledge.
Technical skills, tools and methods — mandatory
- Structured skill: .NET Framework at Confirmed level; most recent experience may be any time.
- Structured skill: Agile at Confirmed level; most recent experience may be any time.
- Structured skill: JIRA & Confluence for project tracking and knowledge management at Confirmed level; most recent experience may be any time.
- Structured skill: Prince 2 at Confirmed level; most recent experience may be any time. This does not make certification mandatory.
- Structured skill: UML at Confirmed level; most recent experience may be any time.
Preferred requirements
- Ideally, complex IT project management experience in a .NET technical context.
- Experience in system/application migration or integration projects.
- Significant experience with convergence between organisations (merger/acquisition and teams using different technologies) or technologies (mainframe phase-out or COBOL replacement by .NET), including supporting team skills.
- Experience leading a .NET development team.
- Knowledge of standards and governance processes.
- Knowledge of basic tools such as Jira and Confluence.
- PRINCE2 certification or an equivalent is an advantage.
- Good knowledge of both main national languages is an important advantage; French and Dutch are also mandatory elsewhere.