Project Director

Straive; Mumbai; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 3,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Straive is seeking a senior program delivery leader in Mumbai to oversee multi-project IT engagements for external clients. The role emphasizes governance, financial health, and a robust delivery framework across Agile, Scrum, and Hybrid environments.

The ideal candidate has 15–18 years of delivery experience, strong financial acumen, and exceptional communication skills to briefing C-suite and client stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 15–18 years of progressive experience in IT delivery for external clients.
• Proven track record managing multi-project portfolios.
• Deep knowledge of Agile/Scrum and Hybrid delivery with metrics tracking.
• Strong understanding of project financials, margins, and cost tracking.
• Excellent verbal and written communication to C-suite and client stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Establish and enforce delivery governance across client projects.
• Oversee delivery under Agile/Scrum and Hybrid frameworks with sprint cadence and release schedules.
• Identify gaps in scope, resources, and timelines; manage inter-project dependencies and risks.
• Act as primary operational escalation point for client accounts and drive remedial actions.
• Coordinate with recruitment, presales, and finance to ensure capacity, scope clarity, and invoicing accuracy.

Skills

Program governance

Delivery framework

Cross-functional leadership

Financial acumen

Stakeholder communication

Risk management

Metrics tracking

Capacity planning

Job description

Experience: 15 – 18 Years

Primary Responsibilities & Core Competencies

1. Program Governance & Financial Tracking (P&L)

• Establish, standardize, and enforce delivery governance across all constituent client projects.
• Track and optimize critical program KPIs including delivery velocity, critical path variance, defect density, and resource utilization.
• Monitor and manage the financial health of assigned accounts, actively tracking burn rates and implementing strategies to maintain or improve target profit margins.

2. Delivery Mechanics & Framework Management

• Oversee projects executing under both Agile/Scrum and Hybrid delivery frameworks, ensuring teams maintain a predictable sprint cadence and release schedule.
• Review project plans and sprint backlogs to identify critical gaps in scope, resource allocation, and timeline.
• \Actively resolve inter-project dependencies and delivery risks before they impact the integrated master schedule.
• Serve as the primary operational point of escalation for client accounts.
• Rapidly execute rigorous Root Cause Analyses (RCAs) for any delivery slippage, quality drops, or customer escalations, and immediately deploy structured, sustainable remediation plans.

4. Cross-Functional Operations & Capacity Management

• Resource & Capacity Management: Partner closely with Recruitment to forecast capacity demands, address technical talent gaps, and streamline bench management.
• Operational Alignment: Collaborate with Presales during the tail-end of the sales cycle to ensure seamless transition gates, scope clarity, and accurate estimation handovers into active delivery.
• Financial Administration: Partner with the Finance team to guarantee operational hygiene. Ensure customer invoicing is accurate, verified against milestones/timesheets, and dispatched on time. Oversee the timely generation and tracking of vendor work orders (WOs).
• Compliance & Infrastructure: Coordinate with Internal IT and InfoSec to ensure all client-facing engineering environments comply with data security architectures and strict client compliance mandates.

5. Client Management & Professional Candor

• Function as a trusted, confident advisory link between the client’s leadership and internal engineering teams.
• Manage scope creep aggressively via formal change control; confidently negotiate delivery realities and push back constructively against unrealistic timelines or un-baselined requirements.

Candidate Profile & Qualifications

• Experience: 15 to 18 years of progressive experience in IT delivery, with a proven track record of managing multi-project portfolios for external clients.
• Technical Domain Expertise: Proven experience directing complex external software engineering, product development, or technical consulting engagements.
• Methodology: Deep operational knowledge of Agile/Scrum and Hybrid delivery methodologies, including metrics tracking (burndown charts, velocity, cycle time).
• Financial Acumen: Strong understanding of project financials, gross margins, resource costing, and tracking profit metrics.
• Communication: Impeccable verbal and written communication skills, capable of providing direct, action-oriented updates to both internal C-suite executives and external client stakeholders.