What is Cool About This Job

We are a growing Product and Engineering organization that is actively evolving our org across all disciplines (Engineering, Product, UX, Agile / Lean principles and Project Management to name a few). You will have the opportunity to be part of building and driving this transformation with a focus on scaling our Agile/Lean practices across the R&D organization and the company. Sharing your program/project management knowledge and experience will have a visible impact every single day. Teams across the company are excited that we are investing in this discipline and are eager to learn and grow. WP Engine has an excellent company culture focused on truly caring about our customers' success and supporting each other as we grow.

The Day to Day

• Facilitate Program Iteration planning (quarterly) for the Engineering Organization in coordination with Program Managers, Product, and Engineering Management.
• Lead and support efforts to adopt lean/agile development practices.
• Lead partnership efforts to vet and implement systems and processes that support daily management and reporting for our engineering roadmaps.
• Facilitate/Participate in Scrum of Scrums Meetings.
• Responsible for capacity planning/staffing assignment for projects related to your supported engineering team.
• Mentor other Program Managers in R&D to help them grow their program management discipline knowledge.
• Lead WP Engine's largest and most complex projects through all phases of project management.
• Strong ability to lead project teams in breaking down large initiatives into project phases, phases into tactical tasks and subtasks and delegate to appropriate project team members.
• Own and lead the day-to-day progress of project(s) and release initiatives with regard to schedule, budget (Investment), scope and quality for your engineering group.
• Build and maintain program/project documentation and dashboards to make project state visible to all partners.
• Facilitate program/project communication including kick-off events and status updates to all partners as needed.
• Facilitate risk management at the program/project level.
• Engage with other teams in the company, forming relationships, helping find opportunities for collaboration and resolving blockers.
• Strong communication – both written and verbal – with the personality to lead negotiations between diverse stakeholders. Comfortable communicating at every level of the company and with third parties as needed.

Your Expertise and Passion

• 3 years of program management experience versed in multiple methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, etc.)
• 5 years of project management experience with scoping, estimating, documenting project plans, leading teams during project execution, communicating project status, evaluating and mitigating risks.
• 2 years experience with Agile processes and/or leading Agile development teams.
• Has an understanding of the various roles and disciplines across a software engineering org and other related business units and is excellent at partnering with them to achieve goals and drive execution.
• Is a champion for delivering high quality outcomes and knows how to balance the need to deliver value to market with maintaining high engineering standards.
• Sound knowledge of the software development life cycle, product development lifecycle and Lean/Agile frameworks
• Excellent ability to build productive working relationships.
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills; committed to making decisions based on data.
• Experience working with JIRA and Confluence or other similar SDLC management tools

Bonus Requirements:

• Experience or Certification with SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) or similar framework
• Experience with Portfolio for Jira or similar portfolio management tools
• Four-year degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or comparable discipline
• Scrum Master training/certification
• PMP training/certification
• ITIL or Six Sigma training/certification
• Experience running Mergers and Acquisitions projects/programs