Key accountabilities and outcomes

Strategic Planning & Governance

Establish and maintain a strategic delivery approach across multiple workstreams, ensuring alignment with Essential 8 Maturity Level targets.

Represent the Essential 8 project stream in governance forums, supporting the Business Lead and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) in reporting and presenting to senior stakeholders.

Adhere to program management processes for key activities, including status reporting, project finance management, risk and issue management, stakeholder engagement, and governance.

Project Delivery & Execution

Lead delivery activities across each of the streams according to the plan, including detailed planning of milestones, deliverables, tasks, scope, costs, and change management activities.

Manage changes or deviations from the plan with appropriate decision governance.

Maximise the efficient allocation of resources and skills within the project.

Drive continuous improvement and ensure efficient resolution of issues or decisions.

Monitoring & Reporting

Develop monthly tracking mechanisms and dashboards to monitor and report progress to key milestones.

Champion project management/Agile capabilities across the program teams and ensure appropriate levels of reporting to suit senior stakeholder desire to understand key milestones and progress.

Stakeholder Engagement & Collaboration

Engage effectively with stakeholders, leads and project resources on a day-to-day basis.

Collaborate closely with the project team members and other business, risk, technology and security stakeholders to ensure effective delivery integration across all streams.

Risk & Issue Management

Manage risks, issues, dependencies and initiate corrective actions, maintain visibility, and escalate to project governance bodies when necessary..

Desired experience and capabilities

Extensive experience in project delivery, with a proven ability to manage project delivery resources in complex and challenging initiatives across business, data, cybersecurity, and technology domains.

Demonstrated success in delivering cybersecurity uplift initiatives, including alignment with the Essential 8 maturity model (e.g. application control, patch management, configuration hardening, MFA rollout, backups and testing).

Strong understanding of cyber risk, privacy, and security controls in digital environments.

Highly skilled in building partnerships and influencing stakeholders at all levels.

Experience managing projects within large-scale programs, often involving complex scope and tight delivery timeframes.

Exceptional quality in project governance documentation, along with strong communication, presentation, and facilitation skills.

Proven experience in vendor and contract management, including the procurement of technology solutions.

Formal project management certifications and knowledge of project and change management methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, hybrid).

Cybersecurity certifications and knowledge of frameworks highly regarded.

About the organisation

The Senior Project manager is part of the Program Management team which is implementing a major governance and data uplift project at a Commonwealth Agency. The project aims to elevate the Commonwealth Agency's cyber security maturity levels to comply with government mandates. The project seeks to achieve Maturity Level 1 (ML1) by December 2025 and Maturity Level 2 (ML2) by June 2027, addressing current shortfalls in compliance with the Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF). The project focuses on implementing changes to the Commonwealth Agency's Essential 8 maturity and sustainably manage these levels. Key goals include addressing the backlog of vulnerabilities and achieving compliance by the specified deadlines. The core project scope includes patching the current backlog of vulnerabilities in applications and operating systems, implementing multi-factor authentication, and managing administrative privileges through onboarding key systems into CyberArk (Commonwealth Agency's privileged access management system).