Contract: Sr. Technical Project Manager

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to large, Fortune 100 enterprises with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.

Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.

This is an engagement through Upwork’s Hybrid Workforce Solutions (HWS) Team. Our Hybrid Workforce Solutions Team is a global group of professionals that support Upwork’s business. Our HWS team members are located all over the world.

The Sr. Technical Project Manager will be responsible for managing execution of core (run the business) scrum activities, customer demand-driven work and traditional projects. This role will track and be the primary driver for project metrics, schedules and ensuring capabilities are delivered on time. You will initially be focused on Production DevOps initiatives but will need to have experience in multiple technology disciplines and running projects across highly distributed teams as the role will be leveraged across multiple Cloud Engineering efforts.

Work/Project Scope:

• Drive work intake and execution through scrum processes for core (Run-the-business) work and traditional projects for larger initiatives.
• Partner with the Engineering Team Lead(s) to understand work requests, capture requirements, identify the timeline, create tasks and ensure completion.
• Coordinate cross-functional meetings to build project plans, task execution plans, release plans and other artifacts as needed.
• Provide situational leadership and focus to ensure the timely execution and delivery of the activities and success criteria contained in the project plan and schedule.
• Remove ambiguity by connecting teams or individuals (or escalating if needed) so sprints and tasks progress as scheduled.
• Maintain data integrity, completeness and accuracy in team tools for work tracking and reporting
• Lead effective and efficient meetings such as stand-ups, sprint planning, release planning and retrospectives. Drive towards (and track) dates, commitments and next steps.
• Lead the translation of roadmap programs into documented projects, milestones and tasks
• Provide status, project metric updates for each of your assigned roadmap projects and team sprints on a consistent basis.
• Take ownership of impediments and/or obstacles that cannot be resolved by the teams and drive escalation management resolution.
• Partner with team owners to fulfill the scrum master role where needed. Help teams to live agile values, processes and actions for continuous improvement.
• Be an active participant in the PMO and how we build processes that leverage automation to drive standardization and a consistent delivery.

Must Haves (Required Skills):

• Proven years of Technical Project Management experience in a related industry
• Experienced in organizing work via implementing Scrum and Kanban processes
• You have shown success leading multiple major and concurrent technology program management efforts
• Significant experience working with engineering leadership, technical teams and individual contributors
• Ability to communicate authoritatively at a sufficient technical depth using dashboards, charts executive summaries
• Experience tracking work updates in JIRA, Confluence and modern tools for project and broader program management
• Experience with managing projects and teams working on AWS, Azure and/or Google Cloud Platform technologies
• Experience with DevOps model
• Experience working on InfoSec, IT and Customer related projects
• Experience implementing and executing SCRUM methodologies while also managing traditional waterfall deliverables
• SCRUM certified or equivalent experience
• PMP certification or equivalent experience

Upwork is proudly committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce. We never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.