Technical Lead / Project Design Authority

Location: Austin, United States of America

Thales people architect identity management and data protection solutions at the heart of digital security. Business and governments rely on us to bring trust to the billons of digital interactions they have with people. Our technologies and services help banks exchange funds, people cross borders, energy become smarter and much more. More than 30,000 organizations already rely on us to verify the identities of people and things, grant access to digital services, analyze vast quantities of information and encrypt data to make the connected world more secure.

Position Summary

Austin, Texas, USA Onsite

Thales is looking for a Technical Lead/ Project Design Authority (PDA) within Identity and Biometric Solutions (IBS), with minimal supervision of the Program/Project Leader or Engineering Director, to be the main technical leader to manage Design and implementation of several projects, working closely with teams of engineers and technical staff through the implementation and the deployment of advanced Identity and Biometric solutions. 

In this role, you are accountable for one or more projects of significant complexity and/or cost that are of high significance to the company. You are responsible for designing and delivering customized solutions that meets the customer requirements in high quality and security standards. In addition, you will support the Project Manager in the organization of the project - project-level scheduling, reporting, and working across various functional groups to accomplish project objectives.

Regulatory Compliance Requirements

Must have U.S. or Dual Citizenship and be able to obtain post-hire clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S. (CFIUS) and Department of Treasury

Key Areas of Responsibility

BIDs and presales:

• Be the primary technical leader for the engineering part of our offers.

• Ensure the feasibility of the solution in term of architecture and technology maturity with respect to the contractual requirements, the consistency of the solution with product policy within target cost, schedule, and customer various constraints.

• Participate in the elaboration of the Work Breakdown Structure to identify work packages and organize engineering activities.

• Approve the main BID/project engineering reviews and deliverables. 

• Support Customer demo/workshop in terms of presentation and technical discussions

Project Technical Leadership:

• Prepare DVa (Design Validation), describing overall solution architecture, technologies choices, customer needs and regulation constraints, standards, including identifying engineering risks and defined mitigation plans.

• Translate the customer needs into functional solution specifications and write the solution level requirements and interface documents.

• Own the overall solution architecture and design, lead the technical choices to comply to required security, performances, environment constraints, cost, and time frame, and in collaboration architects and Work Package Managers (WPM).

• Approve the technical documentation issued by the project engineering team.

• Approve the workload estimations and help optimize timelines while keeping high quality standards.

• Lead the customer workshop, ensure a good understanding of the customer needs to articulate into a clear and concise solution description, leading to precise specifications.

• Lead the interfaces definition between integrated solution components (customer’s system, our solution), as well as internal sub-systems.

Project Team Leadership:

• Organize and lead technical meetings and peer reviews with PMs and Head of Engineering, and other stakeholders, to perform the solution technical assessment and validation of technical choices.

• Accountable for the project engineering delivery, tracking the progress of the several engineering work package with their respective managers.

• Drive the project execution process for the engineering activities.

• Collaborate to confirm the right strategy for the verification and integration of the solution.

• Coordinate the technical Work Packages to ensure consistency for the integration of the solution.

• Prepare and present the engineering steering committees as required to management and/or customer.

• Identify, consolidate, and monitor the technical risks and related action plans (engineering, quality, and security)

• Report the project status, for the