Senior Project Manager

Summary

The Role
In this role, you will ensure projects are well-organised, well-executed, and delivered successfully on the Guidewire platform. You'll work closely with customers and internal teams to coordinate delivery, manage risks, and keep everything on track—helping ensure our solutions bring measurable value to clients. You will play an active role in delivering fixed-price and outcome-based engagements, maintaining rigorous scope governance and financial discipline to protect both client outcomes and Guidewire's commercial position.

This is a hands-on role ideal for someone who enjoys building relationships, solving problems, and keeping projects moving forward. You'll have opportunities to develop your skills further by working on varied initiatives, supporting cross-functional teams, and learning from experienced leaders.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

Project Coordination and Execution

• Manage day-to-day activities for assigned Guidewire implementation projects, ensuring milestones are met and issues are addressed

• Help define project goals, timelines, and deliverables in collaboration with the team and customer—with clear alignment to fixed-price or outcome-based contract structures

• Track progress using project plans and tools, making updates as needed to maintain scope, schedule, and budget integrity

• Support structured implementation lifecycle phases (e.g., Fit-Gap, Configure, Test, Cutover) consistent with ERP-style delivery best practices on the Guidewire platform

• Assist in maintaining a detailed Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to provide clear visibility of effort, progress, and remaining work across all project workstreams

Scope Management

• Maintain a clearly defined and baselined project scope, ensuring all deliverables are documented and accepted by relevant stakeholders at project initiation

• Monitor day-to-day activities against the agreed scope baseline, identifying deviations early and escalating through formal change control processes

• Support the preparation and documentation of Change Requests (CRs), capturing scope impact, effort estimates, schedule implications, and commercial consequences

• Maintain a change log to track all scope queries, approved changes, and their impact on budget and timeline

• Educate client teams on scope boundaries and the change control process to manage expectations proactively and minimize informal scope additions

Financial Tracking and Reporting

• Track project financials against approved budgets, monitoring planned versus actual costs and flagging variances to senior team members

• Support the preparation of regular financial status reports, including budget burn rate, remaining budget, and projected cost-at-completion

• Assist in applying basic Earned Value Management (EVM) principles—tracking Planned Value (PV), Earned Value (EV), and Actual Cost (AC) to provide objective measures of project performance and progress

• Calculate and report basic EVM indicators, including Schedule Variance (SV), Cost Variance (CV), and Cost Performance Index (CPI), to support early identification of financial risks

• Support milestone-based billing processes by ensuring delivery milestones are clearly defined, acceptance criteria are agreed upfront, and evidence of completion is documented and ready for invoicing

• Coordinate with Finance and Engagement Management teams to ensure billing events are triggered accurately and on time in line with contractual terms

Customer and Team Communication

• Act as the primary contact for the customer on project logistics and updates

• Ensure all stakeholders are informed with timely status updates and follow-ups, including transparent reporting on scope status, financial health, and milestone progress

• Help build strong working relationships with client teams and project collaborators

• Support Senior Project Managers or Program Leads on more complex initiatives as needed

Risk and Issue Management

• Monitor and identify risks early—particularly those that may impact fixed-price margin, scope integrity, or outcome delivery commitments—flagging them to senior team members or stakeholders

• Work with internal teams to troubleshoot blockers and keep the project moving forward

• Ensure decisions are documented, and actions are tracked to closure

• Flag potential scope creep early and escalate through appropriate change control processes to protect commercial positions

Governance and Reporting

• Maintain project documentation, including project charters, meeting notes, RAID logs, scope baseline documents, change logs, and financial reports

• Provide regular status reports to internal teams and external customers, with clear visibility on budget burn, milestone achievement, scope status, and EVM indicators

• Maintain traceability between deliverables, contracted outcomes, and billing milestones to support project sign-off and invoicing

• Contribute to post-project reviews and knowledge sharing across the team

KPIs & Success Metrics

• Project Delivery Health – Timely completion of key project milestones and deliverables

• Customer Satisfaction – Strong working relationships and positive feedback from stakeholders

• Fixed-Price Margin Performance – Delivery within approved cost budgets on fixed-price engagements

• Scope Governance – Effective tracking, documentation, and escalation of all scope changes via formal change control

• Financial Reporting Accuracy – Timely and accurate budget tracking, EVM reporting, and billing milestone management

• Billing Milestone Timeliness – Billing events triggered on time with complete supporting documentation

• At Guidewire, we foster a culture of curiosity, innovation, and responsible use of AI—empowering our teams to continuously leverage emerging technologies and data-driven insights to enhance productivity and outcomes.

Key Skills & Experience

• 5+ years of hands-on project or program delivery experience in software or professional services, with demonstrated experience on Guidewire or large-scale ERP implementations (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Majesco, Duck Creek)

• Understanding of fixed-price and outcome-based delivery models, including scope governance and change control disciplines

• Familiarity with financial tracking concepts, including budget burn, cost variance, and basic Earned Value Management principles (PV, EV, AC, CPI, SV)

• Experience supporting milestone-based billing processes, including the definition of acceptance criteria and billing triggers

• Strong organisational skills with attention to detail and time management

• Excellent verbal and written communication—comfortable working with customers and technical teams

• Experience managing tasks, timelines, and scope within agreed budgets and schedules

• Familiarity with structured implementation lifecycle phases such as Fit-Gap, Configure, Test, and Go-Live Cutover

• Basic understanding of project risks and issue management

• Collaborative mindset—comfortable working across cross-functional teams

• Familiar with common PM tools like Jira, Confluence, MS Project, or similar

• Able to work independently but knows when to escalate

• Motivated to learn and grow into larger project ownership

• Demonstrated ability to embrace AI and apply it to your role as well as use data-driven insights to drive innovation, productivity, and continuous improvement.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Formal training or certification in project management (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2, Agile, SAFe)

• Exposure to the Earned Value Management methodology or formal financial reporting on project engagements

• Experience delivering Guidewire implementations (PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ClaimCenter) or equivalent ERP/enterprise platform projects (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Salesforce)

• Familiarity with fixed-price commercial models, SOWs, and milestone-based billing structures

• Experience in SaaS or cloud-based solution delivery

• Previous work in customer-facing roles in software, IT, or professional services

• Familiarity with the insurance industry or other regulated sectors

• Experience coordinating multi-region or remote teams

• Experience working with delivery partners or third-party vendors

• Understanding of Agile, Scrum, or hybrid delivery methodologies

• Use of tools like Smartsheet, Asana, or Power BI for tracking and reporting

• Ability to manage competing priorities in a dynamic environment

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About Guidewire

Guidewire is the platform P&C insurers trust to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. We combine digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver our platform as a cloud service. More than 540+ insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As a partner to our customers, we continually evolve to enable their success. We are proud of our unparalleled implementation track record with 1600+ successful projects, supported by the largest R&D team and partner ecosystem in the industry. Our Marketplace provides hundreds of applications that accelerate integration, localization, and innovation.

For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com and follow us on Twitter: @Guidewire_PandC.

Guidewire Software, Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to an inclusive workplace, and believe that a diversity of perspectives, abilities, and cultures is a key to our success. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability. All offers are contingent upon passing a criminal history and other background checks where it's applicable to the position.

Guidewire is proud to be a disability inclusive employer. We are committed to providing individualized accommodations and support to candidates for any part of our hiring process. If you think you may need disability-related accommodations, please email EmployAbility at accommodations-gw@employ-ability.org.uk, our disability partner, or schedule a call with an EmployAbility expert (calendar booking slot) for a confidential conversation.