Technical Project Manager

Job Description

We’re seeking a partner who views delivery as a means of empowering teams rather than just managing tickets; this role is about building sustainable rhythms, not performing ticket hygiene. Currently, our CEO handles daily standups and real-time prioritization, but as we grow, we need a partner who can build a sustainable rhythm for our teams. In this role, you’ll foster a healthy delivery cadence across our data, applications, and commercial workstreams, creating the space for your team to do their best work. You’ll mentor 2–3 project managers, helping them own their workstreams while you serve as a strategic bridge to leadership. Your goal isn’t just to manage a schedule, but to build a collaborative environment where priorities are clear, timelines are realistic, and everyone—from the CEO to our newest engineer—feels supported by a process that actually works for them.

How you’ll make an impact

• Mentor and support a team of 2–3 project managers. You’ll be their coach and advocate, helping them refine their planning skills and ensuring they have what they need to succeed in their respective workstreams.
• Facilitate daily standups that focus on genuine connection and problem-solving. You’ll ensure these sessions—including those with our offshore colleagues—are productive spaces where roadblocks are cleared and everyone stays aligned on the 'why' behind their work.
• Partner with leadership on intake and prioritization. You’ll help translate big-picture goals into achievable plans, ensuring we balance ambition with our team’s actual capacity so we can avoid burnout and maintain high quality.
• Protect the team’s focus. You’ll help everyone stay committed to the agreed-upon scope, navigating changes thoughtfully through open communication rather than ad-hoc pivots.
• Own the roadmap and dependency map across data engineering and applications, and make cross-team blockers visible before they cost a deadline.
• Collaborate with government-delivery leads to align on shared resources and timelines, ensuring our various projects support one another harmoniously.
• Lead retrospectives that celebrate wins and foster a culture of continuous learning. You’ll help the team identify honest improvements and turn those insights into positive changes in how we work.
• Cultivate shared documentation habits. You’ll help the team see the value in Jira and Confluence as tools for clarity and collaboration, making sure our knowledge is accessible and our progress is visible to all.
• Listen to ambiguous needs and help distill them into clear, actionable paths. You’ll act as a translator, ensuring everyone is on the same page and feels confident in their direction.
• Manage stakeholders across engineering and leadership, and escalate cleanly when a decision genuinely needs to go above this role rather than absorbing it silently.

Required

• 8+ years of technical program or project management, including prior experience managing other project managers, not only individual contributor work.
• PMP certification (or equivalent — CSM, SAFe) required.
• Direct experience instituting processes in a founder-led, high-growth, previously ad-hoc environment — this is a qualifying background, not a nice-to-have, and should be probed specifically in interviews.
• The ability to be a trusted advisor to senior leadership, comfortably advocating for the team’s time and needs through constructive, data-driven partnership.
• Deep Jira and Confluence fluency, at an administrative and process-design level, not just as a daily user.
• Track record of running standups, sprint planning, and retrospectives that produce real behavior change, not calendar filler.
• Excellent written communication — this role's documentation and scope-translation The output should stand on its own without a verbal walkthrough.
• Willing and able to regularly attend meetings on an offshore (India) team’s working hours — this is a standing part of the role, not an occasional accommodation.

Preferred

• East Coast or Eastern time zone based. This role will regularly need to attend meetings on India working hours, and an East Coast base minimizes how early or late those hours fall.
• Exposure to government or public-sector contract delivery, sufficient to coordinate with a government-delivery lead on shared timelines.
• Experience managing a distributed team of project managers across onshore and offshore locations.
• Background in a data, analytics, or AI company, or another environment where R&D and production work run in parallel rather than sequentially.

What success looks like in the first 90 days

• Standups run without the CEO present, and produce accurate status.
• The 2–3 project managers on the team have clear workstream ownership, a consistent reporting format, and a defined escalation path to this role.
• Every active piece of work has a ticket, an owner, and a timeline; the backlog has a visible, ranked priority order.
• At least one instance of a leadership request being sized, sequenced, and explicitly traded off against existing work — and it stuck.