Program Manager/Engineering

Ninth Wave, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 110,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Ninth Wave, Inc. in New York, NY seeks a Program Manager/Engineering to own delivery of complex software projects, aligning functional and technical work with stakeholders and ensuring the right scope, timing and outcomes.

You will lead planning, estimation, execution and continuous improvement across cross-functional teams, with strong emphasis on SDLC governance and risk mitigation. The role requires collaboration with engineering, product and operations, delivering status updates to senior

Qualifications

• Proven track record delivering complex CRM/reporting products.
• Strong leadership and accountability from ideation to deployment.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams and SDLC ceremonies.
• Proficiency with Jira, Confluence and related Atlassian tools.
• Financial services software development experience preferred.
• Ability to manage scope, risks, and communications up/down.

Responsibilities

• Build comprehensive, end-to-end project plans and ensure milestones are tracked.
• Refine business requirements into detailed technical stories and tasks.
• Lead planning, estimation and capacity planning across sprints and increments.
• Drive continuous improvement and tactical/strategic solutions for delivery.
• Identify and manage risks, issues and change with clear mitigation steps.
• Coordinate with engineering, product and operations to ensure delivery.

Skills

CRM delivery

Leadership

Stakeholder mgmt

Agile & Waterfall

SDLC ceremonies

Cross-functional

Risk management

Communication

Problem solving

Customer focus

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Structure

EazyBI

MS Office

AWS

Kafka

Job description

Program Manager/Engineering

New York, NY

Position Overview:

The Program Manager is a member of the Delivery team and responsible for knowing the \"who, what, where, when and why\" of both functional & technical details for the projects in their portfolio. This means engaging the key members of the project and being able to effectively communicate with each (both top down and bottom up). They are responsible for managing processes including scope, issues & risk management. In addition to their project responsibilities, this team member will be involved in process review, audits of project documentation as well as communicating status and pulling together project SDLC related documentation for projects.

Responsibilities

Project Planning

• Build comprehensive, end to end project plans which span from the inception of a project through to completion.
• Create Project plans collaboratively with your peers and colleagues.
• Capture business facing milestones & critical path deliverables and track towards them.

Project Estimation

• Work with Engineering Leads and Product Managers to refine business requirements into technical stories and tasks
• Demonstrate effective project estimation using industry standard estimation methods (PDU, Story Points, Shirt Sizes, Complexity, etc.)
• Effective and accurate capacity planning from both a sprint and increment perspective

Continuous Improvement

• The Program Manager should always have a mind on improving the capability of a team to deliver. This is typically discussed at the Scrum level via Retrospectives. However, a Delivery lead should always think forward on lessons learned and how to solve issues tactically as they arise and evaluate strategic solutions for long term.

Risk Management

• The Program Manager should be able to identify unanticipated risks that may occur during a project. Analyze, the impact of these risks and come up with collaborative mitigation strategies to ensure they do not happen wherever possible.
• Should also have the ability to document issues as they arise, implement mitigation strategies, and effectively communicate impacts on not only the project the issue is related to, but any other \"knock on\" impacts as a result.

Project Execution

• Demonstrate themselves as a leader of the team, able to manage all responsibilities that come with project management.
• Track sprint execution using Jira Scrum Boards, Structure, EazyBI reporting and queries in JQL
• Daily engagement with internal team members to ensure SDLC tollgates are delivered on time and are deliverables are fit for purpose
• Hands-on engagement with the change management process, including representation of deliverables in change management forums
• Set-up the team to succeed and ensure that when items are added to a sprint for delivery, all prerequisites are satisfied.
• Collaborating across workstreams / pods where needed to ensure successful delivery.
• Manage scope, risks & issues, resolving at the lowest level and escalating as needed.
• Assigning tasks to project team members.

Stakeholder Management

• Providing regular updates to senior leadership within Jefferies.
• Effectively manage change requests and potential scope creep utilizing data such as time, complexity & effort.
• Demonstrate an ability to effectively manage down and up.

Methodology

Should be fluent in both Agile & Waterfall methodologies as it relates to project management, and they should be able to identify the appropriate project management process as it relates to the project and apply fit for purpose solutions to successfully manage a project from start to finish.

Skills

• A proven track record of delivering complex products that include CRM and / or Reporting deliveries.
• Clear and defined leadership – ability to take charge, own a deliverable and carry it through ideation to deployment
• Leading teams through feature estimation and other standard SDLC ceremonies / practices
• Identifying, scoping & developing ways to improve the delivery capability of teams
• Ability to quickly identify, manage risks and issues, resolving them at the lowest level and escalating /communicating approach when needed to the appropriate individuals
• Understanding impacts across Madison & bringing teams together to work collaboratively
• Prior experience in Financial Services software development projects
• Proven track record of successful delivery of complex, cross workstream dependent projects
• Experience in either an agile or iterative development workstream, with an ability to apply best practices from Waterfall, sAFE, etc. when & where needed
• Experience with Atlassian stack as well as industry best of breed tools – examples include:
  • Jira, Confluence, Structure, EazyBI, Microsoft Suite
• Experience with AWS technology stack and Kafka are preferred