Technical Project Manager

Somos is seeking a dynamic Technical Project Manager with proven experience managing geographically distributed initiative teams, including full-time employees, contractors, and vendors. This hands-on role requires proficiency with efficiency and time management tools like Jira and Confluence.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience on government initiatives, working with teams of product owners, software architects, developers, quality engineers, DevOps, and security engineers. Exceptional communication, presentation, and negotiation skills are essential for coordinating work and providing status updates across various organizational groups.

The candidate must possess strong technical knowledge to understand software components, technologies, and tools used by the team to architect, design, build, and support high-quality solutions. Familiarity with the SDLC, including automation tools, CI/CD, release engineering, and release management, is crucial.

Experience with planning tools like Advanced Jira Roadmaps and creating technical and process documentation is required. The candidate should have prior hands-on experience managing Scrum, Kanban, and Agile processes, including planning, grooming, and retrospectives as a Scrum Master. Organizing interdisciplinary planning sessions for product and solution teams is also desired.

Core Responsibilities & Accountabilities:

• Collaborate: Work with product owners, technical teams, scrum masters, vendors, and stakeholders to create the source of truth for initiative architecture, plans, and status.
• Processes: Ensure team agreements, roles, and responsibilities are documented, and team members follow agreed-upon processes, including documentation, updating status, engaging in team meetings, and being accountable to their stakeholders.
• Accountability: Documenting team and partner action items; following up; upholding accountability and following escalation processes where needed while always prioritizing trust building, empowerment and collaboration.
• Agile Principles: Use agile processes and principles in all areas – team empowerment, risk-taking, experimentation, decision-making, etc. Ensure the team always feels safe to do the right thing.
• Planning: Engage the team in planning for short and long term as well as plan releases. Communicate and coordinate these plans with partner and dependent teams.
• Initiative Planning: Develop detailed initiative plans, fix timelines, allocate resources effectively, and oversee progress.
• Stakeholder Management: Identify stakeholders, categorize them based on involvement, and take necessary actions to improve management.
• Risk Identification: Analyze the initiative environment to identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies.
• Schedule Management: Manage the program timetable, ensuring all initiatives and activities are on track and proactively eliminating barriers.
• Quality of Delivery: Track and ensure all processes are being followed and quality metrics are being met on a continuous basis. Meet with quality and production support teams continuously to review delivery quality.
• Cross-Functional Coordination: Facilitate communication and collaboration across different teams to ensure alignment and successful delivery.
• Resource Allocation: Allocate resources efficiently to meet initiative demands and ensure optimal team performance.
• Continuous Improvement: Drive continuous improvement initiatives to optimize efficiency and quality in execution.
• Arrange technical discussions on an as needed basis with relevant stakeholders to ensure production issues and design impediments continue to be removed and teams are delivering on technical debt on a regular basis.
• Reporting: Monitor and report on program status regularly to ensure deliverables are on time and within budget.
• Perform other duties as assigned. 

Minimum Qualifications & Skills:

• Minimum of 8 years of relevant experience in a technical environment, with a proven track record of managing complex projects.
• Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology).
• Extensive experience with Agile methodology in a software development environment, including Scrum, DevOps, Continuous Development/Continuous Integration, and automated testing.
• Strong ability to collaborate with internal and external resources, demonstrating excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Advanced proficiency with Jira, Confluence, and Excel for project management and reporting.
• Demonstrated experience in building and analyzing reports to drive project decisions and improvements.
• Solid understanding of software development life cycle (SDLC) processes and best practices

Preferred Qualifications & Skills (if any):

• PMP Certification, or CSM Certification: Certification validating proficiency in Scrum practices and methodologies, or SPC Certification: Certification showcasing the ability to scale Agile practices effectively.
• Experience with Cloud Technologies: Proficiency with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Advanced Data Analysis Skills: Expertise in using data to drive decision-making and optimize processes.

Working Conditions 

• Remote “Work Together Anywhere” position with home office environment using standard office equipment 
• Primarily a non-travel role but may be requested to travel for meetings, company annual Summit, and other events              

Somos does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status.   

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive list of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of this position.   Aspects of this job description may change at any time, with or without notice. 

This job description is not intended as and does not create an employment contract.  The organization maintains its status as an at-will employer.  Employees can be terminated for any reason not prohibited by law. 

Employees must be able to perform the essential functions of the position satisfactorily and, if requested, reasonable accommodations will be made to enable employees with disabilities to perform the essential functions of their job, absent undue hardship.