Senior Technical R&D Project Manager

Arctic Wolf, with its unicorn valuation, is the leader in security operations in an exciting and fast-growing industry—cybersecurity. We have won countless awards for our excellence in security operations and remain dedicated to providing an industry-leading customer and employee experience. 

Our mission is simple: End Cyber Risk. We’re looking for a Senior Technical R&D Project Manager to be part of making that happen. 

About the Role

As a Senior Technical R&D Project Manager you will work with R&D teams to help drive agile software delivery.  This is a hands-on Project Manager role.  You will be working with R&D leaders to not only manage project delivery, but also focused on working with R&D leaders and the R&D Operations team to define and rollout project management best practices across R&D teams.

Accountable for organizing project teams to achieve exceptional results with a high-level of predictability and quality whilst delivering significant business value to customers.  Expected to have knowledge and experience in blending traditional project management principles and practices with an Agile development approach to provide the right balance of agility and predictability.

Previous product development Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) project management experience required.

Responsibilities Include:

• Focus on process and continuous improvements of cross-functional collaboration.

• Maintain project scope, schedule, quality and budget.

• Focus on identifying gaps at the organizational level and work to help define (and manage) the solution. 

• Lead and coach development teams to deliver high value features in partnership with product management.

• Work with Product Managers to support R&D deliverables into wider go-to-market strategies.

• Develop, create and track project delivery key performance indicators (KPIs) through project dashboards and basic analytics, including burnup/burndown and velocity tracking.

• Oversee and provide project updates to R&D leaders covering progress, risks, dependencies and issues.

• Manage project conflicts, challenges and dynamic business requirements to keep operations running at optimal performance.

• Able to conduct post-mortem/retrospective, root cause and preventive action analysis to help teams continuously improve their practices to ensure maximum productivity.

• Take lead to proactively identify and eliminate impediments and facilitate maximum productivity.

• Drive effective teamwork, communication, collaboration and commitment across multiple groups with competing priorities.

• Create and manage Product Delivery Plans (PDP) for all AWN projects.  SDLC from GreenLight/Ideation/Concept through General Availablity including Ongoing Shipment & Support.

• Clearly communicating project status to upper management and ensure that data is presented in a consistent and easy to understand manner leading to actionable conclusions.

• Control: we have the right level of governance, inspection, metrics to ensure what we are delivering is a high-quality best in class product, fit for purpose, fit for market and will beat competition

• Expertise with respect to progress tracking/reporting, communications management, resource management, issues management, risk management, change management, vendor management and business alignment.

• Manages large cross-functional initiatives and projects that span 30+ development teams with multiple milestones and deliverables. Has built strong relationships with R&D Directors and Executive management and a strong partnership with Product Program Management.

We value a culture of sharing, so every team has the opportunity to share their work with the entire department during our monthly R&D Demos. Once a year we hold a department-wide Hackathon, teaming up across all R&D teams over four days to collaborate and build cool ideas outside the normal project scope. While innovation is the focus, some of these ideas do make it into our products.

About You

• Has built strong relationships with R&D Directors and Executive management and a strong partnership with Product Program Management