Caktus has grown sharp web and SMS applications for business, higher education, and social good since 2007. Our award-winning, Agile teams focus on developing for impact and scalability. We specialize in custom web applications, but also offer discovery workshops, best practices consulting, and team augmentation. As a full-service shop, Caktus aims to provide clients with an expertly curated experience throughout the development process. Past and current clients include Creative Commons, Duke Health, United Nations Development Programme, Truth Initiative, PBS, and others in media, travel, education, finance, and health research.
We are looking for a Technical Project Manager to provide leadership, guidance, and organization for the projects on one of our internal development teams.
While we are located in Durham, North Carolina candidates in other states within the US are encouraged to apply, if they are comfortable working Eastern time zone hours. This opportunity is a full-time position.
Skills:
- **Process, plans, organization...you’ve got it: **Our Project Manager will have extensive working experience using Agile and Scrum. Comfortable defining sprint goals when necessary and maintaining/prioritizing backlogs for multiple projects. Experience tracking the progress of projects against budgets and, with the team's help, identify and mitigate risks of going over budget before it is too late. Comfortable with the Google suite of tools, managing a Kanban ticketing system, and other technology for managing projects and meetings.
- **The ability to get things done: **Our Project Manager will have a great deal of experience working on a diverse set of projects with a variety of clients and personalities and has an ability to speak intelligently about the web and how complex web applications are built. Run meetings with an agenda and purpose, no “pro forma” rituals or meetings just for meetings’ sake.
- Communication with stakeholders: Our Project Manager will be able to convert client requests into actionable tickets, get necessary data, designs, etc from clients in a timely manner, and manage client expectations around deliverables and deadlines.
- **With a strategic mindset, you facilitate velocity: **Our Project Manager will be involved in every stage of our projects, from estimation to maintenance, guiding our teams and clients through the nebulous journey of custom projects. A proven record of consistent and balanced team building, facilitation and communication skills is non-negotiable
You are:
- Confident with a small ego, you know how to lead with grace: An effective Project Manager at Caktus will have the authority and confidence to make decisions but is humble enough to seek guidance and advice from teammates and clients. When functioning optimally, our Project Manager will set projects, people, and conversations up for greatness through expert planning, patience, organization, and inclusive communication.
- **Flexible and have Agile experience: **Our Project Manager will be comfortable with the iterative nature of Agile workflows and able to adapt the team processes to the different working styles of both clients and co-workers.
- **Curious with a bias toward learning, you are open to feedback and iterative improvement: **Our Project Manager believes that all feedback is good and will use it to push projects and ideas further, faster, and better. You have a knack for listening, asking the right questions of internal and external stakeholders, and solving problems clients never knew they had. A talent for gathering project requirements, both design and functional, our Project Manager will close the feedback loop by sharing learnings with their team and broader Caktus community to support collective growth.
The First 90 Days...here’s what to expect:
Within 30 days, you will: maintain and improve your team’s long-term project schedule
- Become familiar with current team projects.
- Work collaboratively with other project managers and teams to optimize the long-term planning to ensure a consistent process across teams
- Track completed work against the agreed-upon budget and schedule with clients.
**Within 60 days, you will: **
Manage all aspects of communications related to client projects
- Communicate effectively and build relationships with clients
- Set client expectations as far in advance as possible to mitigate surprises
- Organize regular client check-in meetings that maintain focus on current work completed, blocking issues, and upcoming work.
- Obtain and document written client acceptance of deliverables and communicate with accounting regarding invoices
- Facilitate communication with our support team, Rockrose, which includes communicating team capacity, project focus, etc.
P_roactively manage the backlog for 1 team and 4-8 client projects_
- Determine risks during the planning and help mitigate risks for the duration of the project
- Define acceptance criteria for the team
- Identify scope creep when it happens and incorporate it into the team’s backlog, identifying new business opportunities with the client when appropriate
- Based on the team’s velocity, predict any potential delays in time and adjust client expectations appropriately
- Maintain a well-groomed backlog of tasks for each project, with sufficient tasks prioritized and “ready to go”
Within 90 days, you will: create compelling plans for new client work
- Listen to client needs and quickly understand requirements
- Accurately and succinctly relay client requirements to developers and designers in coordination with the Partnerships team
- Jointly with developers, sales and designers, create comprehensive and accurate estimates
- If it appears that assumptions or estimations for the project won’t meet deliverable expectations, work cooperatively with clients and the development team to creatively restructure work to fit within budget and time constraints.
- Identify future skills or availability gaps and raise hiring or training needs for the team.
- Plot out accurate project schedules
- Convert backlog into client-friendly project plans and obtain client buy-in for them.
The starting salary range for this position is approximately $85,000-$100,000 commensurate with experience.
Caktus Group is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We thrive on, encourage, and celebrate diversity and strive to create an inclusive environment for all employees regardless of race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, body, genetic information, marital status, political belief or activity, or status as a veteran.