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Position Description:
Position Summary
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a prestigious research and development organization that plays a vital role in the study of the universe. Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) is a nonprofit organization that manages and operates the NRAO under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Observatory is a hub for technological and scientific collaboration, operating state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the international scientific community. The Observatory has been instrumental in the study of black holes, galaxies, and the early universe.
The IT Project Manager is responsible for planning, coordinating, and delivering technology projects that support organizational goals and business objectives. This role manages projects from initiation through completion, ensuring deliverables are completed on time, within scope, and within budget while meeting quality standards. They will work closely with IT teams, observatory stakeholders, vendors, and leadership to define project requirements, manage resources, identify and mitigate risks, communicate progress, and drive successful implementation of technology solutions. The ideal candidate has strong organizational, communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills, along with experience managing IT projects in a dynamic environment.
The location for this position will be at one of the NRAO sites in Charlottesville, VA; Green Bank, WV; or Socorro, NM. Domestic travel will be required up to 20%.
What You Will be Doing
- Project Planning and Delivery: Lead IT projects from initiation through closure, defining scope, objectives, deliverables, schedules, budgets, and resource requirements to ensure successful delivery.
- Stakeholder Management: Collaborate with business stakeholders, IT teams, vendors, and leadership to align project goals, manage expectations, and facilitate timely decision-making.
- Project Execution and Monitoring: Track milestones, deliverables, dependencies, and performance; provide regular status updates and implement corrective actions as needed.
- Risk and Issue Management: Identify, assess, and mitigate project risks and issues, manage scope changes, and escalate critical concerns when necessary.
- Budget and Resource Management: Monitor project budgets, forecasts, resource allocations, and vendor performance to ensure efficient use of resources.
- IT Implementation and Governance: Coordinate technology implementations, system upgrades, integrations, testing, deployments, and change management while ensuring compliance with IT governance and security requirements.
- Documentation and Reporting: Maintain project plans, status reports, risk and issue logs, meeting records, and other required documentation.
- Continuous Improvement: Apply appropriate project management methodologies, including Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid approaches.
Work Environment
Work is typically performed in an office or laboratory environment. Occasional domestic travel will be required. Domestic travel will be required up to 10%. Telework up to ~1 day a week may be considered. A remote position may be considered for exceptionally qualified candidates.
Position Requirements
You have:
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, Project Management, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
- 3 or more years managing or coordinating IT projects, technology implementations, or related initiatives.
- Demonstrated experience developing project plans, schedules, budgets, status reports, and project documentation.
- Experience coordinating cross-functional teams and managing multiple project activities or priorities simultaneously.
- Working knowledge of project management methodologies, including Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid delivery models.
- Experience identifying and managing project risks, issues, dependencies, scope changes, and resource constraints.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate technical information to nontechnical stakeholders.
- Proficiency with project management and collaboration tools such as Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, Jira, and Confluence.
- Strong analytical, organizational, problem-solving, and time-management skills.
- Ability to work as part of a team, exercise sound judgment, and deliver results in a deadline-driven environment.
While not required you may have:
- Experience managing enterprise IT initiatives, including cloud migrations, application implementations, infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity projects, data integrations, or enterprise system deployments.
- Experience managing third-party vendors, consultants, service providers, and technology contracts.
- Familiarity with IT service management (ITSM), ITIL practices, change management, and configuration management.
- Experience preparing reports, dashboards, project forecasts, and portfolio updates.
- Experience working in regulated environments or organizations with formal IT governance and compliance requirements.
Additional Requirement
Observatory employees must be authorized to work in the United States. The Observatory presently cannot sponsor H-1B Visas for this position.
Total Rewards
Compensation
The starting salary of this position is between $90,000 - $110,000. Factors which may affect starting pay may include; education, experience, skills, competencies, other qualifications of the successful candidate, as well as internal equity and labor market conditions.
Benefits
Associated Universities, Inc (AUI) offers a comprehensive benefits package addressing the needs of employees and their families with most benefits beginning on the first day of employment, subject to eligibility requirements. AUI provides:
- Excellent paid time off (13 holidays, annual accrual of up to 24 vacation days)
- Medical, dental and vision plans are effective on the first day of employment.
- AUI’s retirement benefit contributes an amount equal to 10 percent of a qualified participant’s base pay with no required employee contribution.
- Click Total Rewards for more information.
Application Instructions
For consideration, select the “Apply” button above. Please be prepared upload a cover letter describing your interest in this position along with a current resume.
Equal Opportunity Employer Statement
AUI is an equal opportunity employer. To view our complete statement, please visit https://public.nrao.edu/careers/. If you require reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process, you may submit your request by sending an email to [email protected]. PM20
Skills Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Administration, Project Management, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
- At least 3 years managing or coordinating IT projects, technology implementations, or related initiatives.
- Experience developing project plans, schedules, budgets, status reports, and project documentation.
- Experience coordinating cross-functional teams and managing multiple project activities or priorities simultaneously.
- Working knowledge of Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid project delivery methodologies.
- Experience identifying and managing project risks, issues, dependencies, scope changes, and resource constraints.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including communicating technical information to nontechnical stakeholders.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, Jira, and Confluence.
- Strong analytical, organizational, problem-solving, and time-management skills.
- Ability to work as part of a team, exercise sound judgment, and deliver results in a deadline-driven environment.
- Experience managing enterprise IT initiatives such as cloud migrations, application implementations, infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity projects, data integrations, or enterprise system deployments.
- Experience managing third-party vendors, consultants, service providers, and technology contracts.
- Familiarity with IT service management, ITIL practices, change management, and configuration management.
- Experience preparing reports, dashboards, project forecasts, and portfolio updates.
- Experience working in regulated environments or organizations with formal IT governance and compliance requirements.
- Authorization to work in the United States.
What We Do
Developed over the past seven years in collaboration with 60,000 human agents, Apollo is a breakthrough language model for objective-oriented conversational agents. Apollo replaces the transformer architecture of traditional LLMs with a neuro-symbolic architecture that couples the conversational skills of generative AI with the predictability and actionability of rule-based AI, making it better suited for agents. Companies of any kind can fine-tune the Apollo base model on a specific task and deploy conversational agents that work on their behalf. These fine-tuned agents can continuously improve from human feedback, which is integrated into their updated versions. They further feature fine-grained control, the capacity to adhere to the deploying company’s policies and a white-box view of their operations. With native tool use, defined scope and guardrails and superior steerability, Apollo Agents outclass LLM Agents across all conversational use-cases. Apollo does not train on company data, instead, it can be pre-integrated with any number of internal systems, and seamlessly call the relevant API endpoint whenever necessary. Like transformer-based LLMs, Apollo has a “system prompt”, broken down to structured, conditional policies. Workflows and tools are native to Apollo and do not rely on function calling or chaining. This enables 100% success rate in executing complex API calls and the ability to return grounded answers in each interaction from any number of endpoints or sources. Unlike transformer-based LLMs, Apollo is fine-tuned at the interaction level. In the Simulator, companies can generate automated conversations simulating the agent in production in front of users. They then proceed to fine-tuning the agent by correcting its output in each unsatisfactory interaction. This process can be repeated continuously to improve the performance and alignment of the agent. Unlocked with Apollo are some exciting new agentic use-cases, including the ability for companies to responsibly communicate with their customers using conversational AI, and to sell their products and services without the need for human involvement, the example featured in the Live Demo Agent.
