Digital Project Manager (Contractor)

Dear Digital Project Managers,

Here's the situation; before our clients hire us, they've often invested a lot of time, energy, and money into having custom web applications developed to help them solve some of their business challenges. They come to us looking for a team to provide dependable support and maintenance of their existing software. We take care of feature updates, bug fixes, performance improvements, tackling technical debt, and helping them to experiment as they navigate forward as a business.

What do we rarely do? Spin up brand new web applications for them. Occasionally, we’ll find ourselves working with an established company who are looking for a new application to help them with a specific initiative but most of our project work is iterating on existing web apps.

The tradeoff? We get to build lasting partnerships with our clients and have some influence on how they're planning for the life of their web applications. So, if you're the type of Project Manager that really enjoys bringing brand new software projects and MVPs to life, this probably isn't the position for you. If you're the type of Project Manager that enjoys helping your team dive into the deep end of complex projects, helping iterate and improve the software, and likes to foster healthy long-term client/account relationships, then we should talk.

FAQ

What duration are you looking at for this contract position? The medium range outlook is that this is an ongoing contract that we would review each quarter. We'll keep an open conversation running about the workload so that there are no surprises.

Are you considering remote candidates for this position? This is a remote-only position. We are looking for somebody based in Brazil, where we currently work with several software engineers.

What hours and schedule are you looking for in this role? Around 15 hours per week. We would love to block as many of those hours together as possible. For example, 3 half days. In an ideal world, we'd also love if those days to be blocked together (e.g. We, Thurs, Fri). All of this is open to discussion to see what works best for us and the ideal candidate.

What are some traits that you’re looking for in this role? We would like to find an empathetic, goal-oriented, and organized person who is able to inspire our team to make our clients successful.

Besides clients and engineers, who else would this role be working with? You would collaborate with our Engineering Manager to establish which team members might be best suited for each client project. Additionally, you would be collaborating with our Account Managers and Senior Project Manager to ensure that we're continuously improving how we're delivering value to our clients.

Who does the person in this role report to? Our COO.

Our Core Values

🙋 PROACTIVE - We actively seek opportunities to improve our client’s products, our processes, and our abilities.

🐒 CURIOUS - A natural curiosity for the undiscovered results in remarkable work for our clients – and stronger connections for our team. We ask questions, learn, and aren't afraid to fail.

🤝 DEPENDABLE - We are invested in our work. We manage expectations. We support our clients and teammates. We hold ourselves, our teammates, and our clients accountable.

🕺 VERSATILE - We readily adapt to change and encourage innovation because our team and work are transparent and flexible.

🙃. DELIGHTFUL - We choose to set a mindful, positive tone that allows everyone to flourish.

We are a small team and wear many hats. In addition to the list of responsibilities below we also expect all of our team members to participate in our marketing efforts, whether that’s you writing blog posts, offering to speak at a conference, or coming up with ideas for new initiatives.

Learn more about Planet Argon

What you'll typically be focused on

• Leading: Inspire and motivate the development team to achieve deliverables for our valued clients. You will help them plan, scope, and execute according to schedule and client budgets:
• Take part in daily stands up to hear and address engineering team issues to keep workflow going.
• Ensure that our client JIRA boards are up to date and in priority order.
• Check that new client requests and requirements are clear and identify risks/gaps so that they are ready for development.
• Forecast the work ahead so the team knows where they should be working and when.

• Partnering up with our clients: Establish rock-solid relationships with our clients and ensure their requirements and timelines are properly accounted for in our planning. They should feel like you and your engineering team are an extension of their businesses:
• Provide weekly updates on budget, project status, and Planet Argon news.
• Develop a steady working relationship through regular status calls
• Document and share client news and updates back to the team and internal stakeholders.

• Continuously growing and improving: Apply and adapt tools and processes to ensure delivery standards:
• Be willing to try new things and introduce best practices.
• Review the tools in current use and identify how they could make the team more efficient.

• Staying ahead of the curve: Proactively manage project issues, risks, and change. Keeping the team on-task, projecting milestones & deliverables to spec. Be able to easily quantify the impact of changing requirements and timelines

• Communicating internally: Represent the team's project plan and timelines to the leadership team and effectively escalate when blockers or resource demands require more set of eyes.
• Develop clear status updates and dashboards that can be consumed easily and updated regularly.
• Provide perspective on the team’s workload, the client's needs, and satisfaction.
• Communicate leadership decisions clearly to the team and client when required.

• A little this and that:
• Participating in short daily standups to outline what you completed yesterday and are aiming to accomplish today.
• Sharing praise when someone on the team does something amazing.
• Sharing your hard lessons/failures with your peers.
• Identifying inefficiencies in our existing processes and proposing solutions.
• And most importantly - helping us become a better version of ourselves than we were yesterday.

We will perform background checks and request professional references from candidates.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Requirements

• 5+ years of Digital Project Management experience
• Persuasive written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent command of English language, with the ability to understand nuanced conversations
• Experience working with external clients and vendors
• Experience of working with multiple clients across multiple projects simultaneously
• Familiar with Agile-based methodologies + tools (SCRUM, Kanban, etc.)
• History of managing multiple client projects simultaneously
• Organized. Very organized. Did we say organized?
• Ability to have both a 1k foot and 30k foot view
• Ability to calmly multi-task and context-switch
• Analytical thinker who thrives at reporting and statistics

Bonus Points

• Experience with JIRA, Confluence, Google Docs, CRMs, Slack, Harvest...

Hourly Range: $45 - $60 USD depending upon experience