Project Manager Royalties (Contractor)

Macmillan is seeking a Project Manager to join our Project Management Office (PMO) team. This role will be responsible for driving end-to-end project delivery for business-critical programs involving royalties management, Bibliosuite, and enterprise-wide technology initiatives. Given the complexity of the program structure, the Project Manager will focus on bridging the gap between business and technology, ensuring accountability across workstreams, and implementing structured governance, change management, and process optimization.

This role requires a strong balance of technical expertise and business process knowledge, along with the ability to navigate conflicting priorities, improve stakeholder alignment, and ensure business readiness before go-live. The ideal candidate will have experience managing large-scale transformations where business adoption, organizational change, and clear operating models are as critical as technical implementation.

Major Responsibilities:

• Program & Project Leadership
  
  
  
  • Own the delivery of complex business and technology transformation programs, ensuring structured execution from initiation to post-go-live support.
  • Define clear workstreams, responsibilities, and governance structures to compensate for the program's atypical team setup and lack of early-stage ownership.
  • Develop and maintain program roadmaps, milestone tracking, and risk management plans to improve visibility and accountability across business and IT.
  • Ensure strong program governance by tracking requirements from initial definition through design, testing, and defect resolution-eliminating gaps in accountability.
  
  
  
  
• Business & Technology Alignment
  
  
  
  • Act as a bridge between business and IT, ensuring that business-led priorities are incorporated into technical delivery and not overshadowed by technology-driven project management.
  • Support the definition of the future state operating model, ensuring that business processes, workflows, and roles are clearly documented before system implementation.
  • Implement structured business analysis and change impact assessments, reducing reliance on SMEs who have competing day-to-day responsibilities.
  • Identify dependencies across business functions, IT teams, and external suppliers to ensure successful system adoption and business process integration.
  
  
  
  
• Change Management, Training & Business Readiness
  
  
  
  • Develop and execute a structured Change Management strategy, filling the existing gaps in user engagement, training, and communication.
  • Lead the execution of a formal Change Impact Assessment, ensuring all teams understand the differences between the old and new ways of working.
  • Establish a Change Agent Network within business teams to drive peer-to-peer support, knowledge sharing, and reinforce key adoption messages.
  • Partner with business leaders to ensure user acceptance testing (UAT) goes beyond IT-driven scenarios and incorporates real-world business workflows.
  • Ensure post-go-live hypercare support includes business-focused defect triage, training reinforcement, and knowledge transfer beyond central SMEs.
  
  
  
  
• Stakeholder & Vendor Management
  
  
  
  • Proactively manage competing priorities between Business and IT, ensuring alignment, transparency, and conflict resolution throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Engage and coordinate with external vendors, ensuring contractual agreements, SLAs, and implementation timelines align with program goals.
  • Improve program-wide communication, creating visibility into the "case for change," business benefits, and future-state vision to drive adoption.
  • Ensure that remotely distributed teams receive structured communication, engagement opportunities, and peer support mechanisms to navigate the change.
  
  
  
  
• Risk Management & Continuous Improvement
  
  
  
  • Identify and mitigate risks related to business readiness, supplier accountability, testing gaps, and change adoption before they escalate.
  • Address the lack of a "golden thread" by implementing traceability from requirements design specs test scripts defects resolution.
  • Capture lessons learned to improve future implementations and strengthen PMO-led governance structures.
  
  
  
  

Required Skills & Knowledge:

• Project Leadership & Transformation Management
  
  
  
  • 8-10 years of experience in business and technology project management, preferably in publishing, media, or entertainment industries.
  • Proven ability to structure and lead programs with complex, atypical team setups and fragmented accountability.
  • Experience defining and implementing business operating models, workstreams, and governance structures.
  • Strong risk management expertise, with a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating gaps before go-live.
  • Experience leading organizational change initiatives and embedding structured change management methodologies.
  • Familiarity with agile, hybrid, and waterfall methodologies, with the ability to adapt based on project needs.
  • Utilize project management tools (Jira and Smartsheets) for status reporting, tracking progress, issue resolution, and delivery.
  
  
  
  
• Business Process & Change Management
  
  
  
  • Experience driving business process optimization, workflow mapping, and future-state process design.
  • Strong ability to conduct change impact assessments and develop structured change management plans.
  • Experience leading user acceptance testing (UAT), ensuring comprehensive business scenario validation.
  • Ability to establish and manage Change Agent Networks, improving communication and business adoption.
  
  
  
  
• Stakeholder & Communication Skills
  
  
  
  • Strong ability to navigate competing business and IT priorities, ensuring balanced decision-making.
  • Proven experience managing remote/distributed teams, ensuring engagement and collaboration.
  • Excellent stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to translate complex technical projects into clear business impacts.
  • Strong vendor and contract management experience, ensuring accountability from external partners.
  
  
  
  
• Technical & Industry Knowledge
  
  
  
  • Hands-on experience with Bibliosuite (configuration, implementation, and optimization) (strongly recommended).
  • Strong understanding of royalty management, metadata standards, and contract rights workflows.
  • Familiarity with publishing rights management platforms (e.g., Klopotek, FADEL Rights Cloud, RoyaltyZone).
  • Experience with business intelligence tools, API integrations, and data management workflows (huge plus)
  
  
  
  
• Certifications (Preferred but Not Required)
  
  
  
  • MP, PRINCE2, PROSCI (Change Management), SAFe Agile, or Lean Six Sigma.
  
  
  
  

This position will have an hourly rate up to $64/ hour. The successful candidate will be employed through Headway Workforce Solutions.

Macmillan Publishers is the U.S. trade company that is part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a large family-owned group of media companies headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's publishing companies include prominent imprints around the world that publish a broad range of award-winning books for children and adults in all categories and formats.

U.S. publishers include Celadon Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Flatiron Books, Henry Holt & Company, Macmillan Audio, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, The St. Martin's Publishing Group, and Tor Publishing Group. In the UK, Australia, India, and South Africa, companies in the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group publish under the Pan Macmillan name. The German publishing company, Holtzbrinck Deutsche Buchverlage, includes among its imprints S. Fischer, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Rowohlt, and Droemer Knaur.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are actively seeking job applicants who reflect a broad representation of differences, including race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, physical ability, neurodiversity, age, family status, economic background and status, geographical background and status, and perspective. We believe that the best companies reflect the incredible diversity in viewpoints, backgrounds, and identities of the world in their staffs, and are committed to inclusive hiring across departments and levels. The successful candidate for this position will be an employee of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.