Lead Engagement Manager

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise-grade systems that carry a significant impact on the client's business within our professional services umbrella, including cloud-native development services and enterprise migration and data management services.
• Work with cross-functional teams to understand the customer’s business and objectives, to ensure Rackspace successfully delivers the right solutions and products for them, at the budget required.
• Project Management responsibilities as defined in PMBOK and Agile manifesto, including but not limited to: initiation activities, scoping, creating program plans, directing project teams, maintaining budget, leading risk and issue management, tracking actions and interdependencies, leading agile ceremonies and program status calls
• Familiarity with delivering projects to statements of work, detailed scope, and budget management.
• Ethical accountability for strategic customer goals and messaging, reliable and accurate financial management, comprehensive risk and issue forecasting, and reporting on regular delivery of value.
• Oversee and monitor the work of program staff, providing delivery support and direction.
• Understand and navigate commercial partnerships, including subcontracting and cloud vendor contracts/funding.
• Ensure Rackspace PMO delivers organizational value through thought leadership, process excellence, and reporting of critical KPIs and data.
• Assist the PMO lead by mentoring and onboarding newer team members, and assisting with recruitment as required.

Skills

• Excellent oral and written communication skills with a track record of interacting with both business and technical staff at all levels, including regular contact at the senior executive level. 
• Possesses exceptional problem-solving skills, strong business judgment, and notable experience collaborating in hybrid teams.
• Your influencing and interpersonal skills will be crucial to drive the program's success. All projects involve cross-functional teams; the ability to communicate the right way at the right time to the right people is critical.
• You are a self-starter technical leader with a shown ability to execute both strategically and tactically.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, including mentoring, coaching, collaborating, and team building. You should be customer-focused with a passion for the cloud, partnering closely with peers, developers, and customers to create solutions, while simultaneously accountable for strategic goals.
• Solid analytical, planning, and interpersonal skills with the ability to handle complex demands. 
• Ability to establish/maintain a high level of customer trust and confidence. 
• Strong experience in SDLC with expert knowledge of both Agile and traditional project management principles and practices.
• Strong ability to evaluate program performance metrics, as well as diagnose and resolve issues. 
• Experience with technical design discussions and the ability to summarize complex topics and options.
• Ability to effectively represent engineering perspectives to partner organizations, product teams, and executive leadership.
• Engage individuals and teams located across multiple geographies and or cultures.  
• Lean into ambiguity or conflicting priorities to succeed in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to toggle between lead and team member, providing direction and mentoring to others where needed.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's Degree in a field related to the role required. At the Manager's discretion, 4 years of additional related experience may substitute for the degree requirement; if substitution is allowed, a regional equivalent to a High School Diploma is required.
• A minimum of 5 years of experience managing large (over 25 people), complex, and lengthy (18+ months) programs through a full lifecycle in the technology industry, within a customer-facing professional services/consulting environment.
• A minimum of 12 years of experience as a project manager is required with a proven track record of managing end-to-end delivery of complex, large-scale projects.
• At least 5 years of hands-on Agile experience, acting as Scrum Master, including scrum-of-scrums/scaled agile projects.
• At least one of the following certifications is required: Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification, CompTIA Project+ certification, Professional Scrum Master (PSM), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), or equivalent.
• At least one public cloud platform foundational cert is preferred: AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP.
• Extensive knowledge of program management disciplines, methodologies, best practices, and tools.
• Strong communication skills; experience regularly presenting to executives.
• Familiarity with public cloud technologies, software development, networking infrastructure, data, and/or security.
• Highly proficient with JIRA and other Atlassian tools, or other board- and card-style Agile management tools.
• Highly proficient with Salesforce. Salesforce PSA experience preferred.
• Technical background (software development/engineering, database/system design, IaaS)
• Self-starter with a results-oriented, proactive management approach.
• Ability to learn on the job quickly and desire to develop expertise in public cloud platforms, cloud data warehousing, and cloud reporting platforms.

Physical Demands

• General office environment: no special physical demands required.
• May require long periods of sitting and viewing a computer monitor.
• Schedule flexibility to include working weekends and/or evenings and holidays as required by the business for 24/7 operations.

Travel

• Occasional domestic/international travel, less than 10%