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Technical Project Manager

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What Is a Technical Project Manager? How to Become One, Salary, Skills.

A technical project manager leverages their unique skill set to adapt resources and solutions to work on complex products and services. Here’s what to know about a technical project manager’s salary, needed skills and how to become one.

 

What Is a Technical Project Manager?

A technical project manager is a type of project manager who has cultivated skills and expertise specific to working on projects involving high-tech product development. They understand the product life cycle, which helps them distribute the workload among team members and foresee what resources they’ll need to get the project done.

 

What Do Technical Project Managers Do?

A technical project manager performs all the usual duties of a project manager, such as setting project deadlines and managing budgets, applying them to technical projects in fields like IT and software development.

Technical Project Manager Responsibilities

  • Delegating tasks to team members.
  • Tracking project progress.
  • Allocating resources as needed.
  • Managing project budgets.
  • Setting project timelines and deadlines.
  • Communicating with stakeholders about project status.
  • Interviewing, hiring and training new team members.
  • Addressing technical issues that arise throughout the course of a project.

Technical Project Managers Within a Company

Technical project managers  may report to a senior project manager or director of project management. In addition to collaborating with employees in technical roles like software developers, technical project managers often work with project coordinators and product managers.

Importance of Technical Project Managers

Companies often depend on technical project managers to lead projects involving software systems, engineering tasks and other advanced topics because of their combination of technical expertise and business acumen.

 

Technical Project Manager | Video: Technology Profession

 

What Skills Are Needed to Be a Technical Project Manager?

Qualifications to Be a Technical Project Manager

  • Experience managing project budgets and timelines.
  • Relevant technical knowledge such as coding languages and software development.
  • Understanding of how to efficiently distribute workloads and allocate resources.
  • Familiarity with hiring and training best practices.
  • Experience working with project management tools and software.

Technical Project Manager Prerequisites

  • A bachelor’s degree in a relevant field like business, communications or computer science.
  • Coding bootcamps and other online courses can help to sharpen technical skills.
  • Many technical project managers also have master’s degrees, though they are not always necessary.

Technical Project Manager Hard Skills

  • Tracking project metrics.
  • Relevant technical expertise.
  • Using project management software.

Technical Project Manager Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and communication skills.
  • Meeting deadlines.
  • Balancing multiple tasks.

Tools and Programs Technical Project Managers Use

  • Project management software like Asana, monday.com, Jira, Trello, Wrike or Basecamp.
  • Collaboration tools like Zoom, Slack and Google Workspace.

 

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How to Become a Technical Project Manager

Technical Project Manager Education and Experience

A technical project manager usually holds at least a bachelor’s degree, but many also pursue higher level degrees, such as a master’s in business administration. Professionals must gain a minimum of four years of relevant work experience before they’re ready to become technical project managers.

Technical Project Manager Certificates and Courses

Technical Project Manager Career Path

Entry-level positions like IT support specialist hone the foundational knowledge and skills to prepare professionals for technical project manager roles. Employees can then move into project coordinator and project manager jobs, acquiring skills specific to project management and product strategy. This breadth of experience is ideal for aspiring technical project managers, who can eventually move up the ladder to becoming a senior project manager or director of project management.

 

Technical Project Manager Salary and Job Outlook

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects there will be more than 70,000 yearly job openings for project management specialists between 2021 and 2031.

The full compensation package for a technical project manager depends on a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s experience and geographic location. See below for detailed information on the average technical project manager salary.

Courses

Expand Your Technical Project Manager Career Opportunities

Round out your professional skillset by completing online project management courses with Udemy.

Udemy

Important:
This course is part of an integrated, university-level curriculum of seven courses (See details below).  This course is the third course in that series and should be taken in sequence.  Please take the…

Udemy

Make yourself a more valuable member of the team by learning how to help organizations make changes faster and with less expense by using Agile approaches.

In nature, as in business – you adapt, or you die…

And…

Udemy

Three reasons to TAKE THIS COURSE right now! 

      The unique reasons for taking this course are: 

  1. Complete, Concise, Confident Overview of  Scrum - You will be confident that you have learned Scrum as…

Udemy

  Get ready to kick some software project butt. 

                  Enter the world of the Agile Samurai, where the most dire of software projects are dispatched with ease and grace. By learning the ways of the Agile…

Certifications

Technical Project Manager Certifications + Programs

Create more opportunities for your career with Udacity’s online project management certifications.

General Assembly’s Software Engineering Immersive is a transformative course designed for you to get the necessary skills for a coding role in three months. 

The Software Engineering bootcamp is led by instructors who are expert practitioners in their field, supported by career coaches that work with you since day one and enhanced by a career services team that is constantly in talks with employers about their tech hiring needs.

 

What you'll accomplish

As a graduate, you’ll have a portfolio of projects that show your knowledge of fundamental programming concepts, as well as experience with languages, frameworks, and libraries that employers demand. Throughout this expert-designed program, you’ll:

  • Create a front-end web application with modern JavaScript frameworks such as Angular or React.

  • Develop and deploy full-stack applications with in-demand technologies such as Ruby on Rails, Python with Django, and Express with Node.js.

  • Build secure full-stack applications by leveraging common design and architectural patterns like model–view–controller (MVC) and Representational State Transfer (REST).

  • Practice version control and collaborative software development with Git and GitHub.

  • Safely model and store data in SQL and NoSQL databases.

  • Consume and integrate third-party application programming interfaces (APIs) in an application.

 

Why General Assembly

Since 2011, General Assembly has graduated more than 40,000 students worldwide from the full time & part time courses. During the 2020 hiring shutdown, GA's students, instructors, and career coaches never lost focus, and the KPMG-validated numbers in their Outcomes report reflect it. *For students who graduated in 2020 — the peak of the pandemic — 74.4% of those who participated in GA's full-time Career Services program landed jobs within six months of graduation.  General Assembly is proud of their grads + teams' relentless dedication and to see those numbers rising. Download the report here.

 

Your next step? Submit an application to talk to the General Assembly Admissions team

 

 

Note: reviews are referenced from Career Karma - https://careerkarma.com/schools/general-assembly

Udacity
Beginner
3 months
5-10 hours

Learn how to build products that deliver continuous value to customers using an Agile approach to software development. By the end of this program, students will be able to differentiate between Scrum, Kanban, and XP, create an environment that fosters high performing teams, and manage iteration planning using Agile techniques. Students will also be able to create a release plan for a Minimum Viable Product, create metrics that show project status, and effectively communicate progress both within and outside of the development team.

Udacity
Beginner
3 months
5-10 hours
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