Technical Project Manager

Overview

Position: Technical Project Manager — Louder Labs Team

Classification: Full-Time

Location: Fully Remote (work from anywhere but you must have access to reliable internet and a quiet workspace for video calls).

Education: Bachelor's Degree preferred

About the Position

Your primary responsibility will be to manage agile projects focused on application development with the goal to complete every project on-time, under budget and with a high level of quality that will help meet client-defined goals. 

You’ll be Grand Central Station for all projects. You’ll work with stakeholders to develop a roadmap and backlog, identify and document business requirements, manage resources (internal and external), identify target dates with clients, and organize roadmaps and sprints to get work done. You’re the go-to person for questions, resources, or whatever the team needs to get the job done.

You are excellent at translating big ideas into projects, from figuring out the master plan to identifying exactly which details need to be executed when.

You are a champion of responsive communication (you don’t mind, and may even relish the idea of, talking by phone, email, video chat, Slack, project management software, emoji, or smoke signal), proactive problem solving, diligence down to the last detail, logistical prowess (you have calendar events to make calendar events), and the kind of warm communication that keeps collaboration and good feels flowing.

You are the client’s advocate on our team. You will be responsible for communicating with clients and determining requirements in the language of their business and then converting those into User Stories. After that, you’ll work with the Lead Developer on the project to create technical descriptions of the tasks to be done. You’ll then close the loop and make sure that all of the technical tasks cover all of the User Stories in order to deliver a great outcome for the client.

Although your day-to-day will involve working closely with our small team, you need to be the kind of person that enjoys working from home and managing their own time.

Project Setup and Planning: Kickoff projects through Louder’s project management, asset-sharing, and coordination systems, including but not limited to Jira, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Slack, and act as an administrator across these platforms.  Work with Subject-Matter Experts (SMEs) to create implementation plans and tasks for all project deliverables.

Agile Project Management: Understand the agile project management methodology and implement it across all of our projects. This includes keeping the buy-in of all stakeholders in the agile process as well as leveraging the agile methodology to allow clients to move fast and get the results they want when they need them.

Portfolio Management: Zoom out and look at all projects the team is working on to make sure that all clients’ needs and timelines are respected while keeping the team moving. This will include coordination with other Portfolio Managers in the company to make sure that all teams are working together in concert.

Chaos Organizer: Collect project artifacts, communication, and any other project assets from a variety of channels (meetings, calls, emails, Slack messages, etc.) and organize them in a systematic and easily-accessible structure so anyone working on the project has exactly what they need at a moment's notice. Document updates in Jira and keep the system polished and running smoothly.

Communication Lead: Foster seamless communication as the primary point of contact between client and development teams by leading client pulse calls/video chats and internal team meetings including taking and delivering notes, compiling action items, and providing agendas. Bring resourcefulness and a solution-savvy perspective to projects day in and day out.

Forecasting and Resource Management: Schedule internal team members on current and future projects, ensuring that the team is operating at full capacity and identifying any gaps or overload. Generate and review weekly productivity reports and project metrics to make sure sprints stay on-track and our team is operating at a healthy capacity without overwhelm.

Reporting and Continuous Improvement: Run sprint retrospective meetings to identify opportunities for improvement. Collect client surveys and release reports to determine if releases were successful (on-time and meeting client expectations).

Quality Control: Assist in day-to-day project and client support, delivering exceptional, professional, high-integrity client service. This may include helping QA a digital execution, testing new (and old) features for bugs, or simply running spell-check on some copy – whatever it takes to ensure every delivery is shipped with attention-to-detail in mind.

First Line of Support: You don’t need to know how to fix clients’ problems, but when a client sends a support request in you are the person that responds to let them know that they are heard, asks for more details if needed, and then assigns the work to the right person on the development team.

About You

You are outrageously organized — color-coding, folders, and systems are the stuff of dreams. Taking an idea and turning it into a timeline of user stories actually sounds like a fun way to spend a day to you!

You are incredibly skilled at both micro and macro thinking — making sure the big picture is always moving forward by way of all the tiny details that need to get done.

You love people — you’re a natural mentor and sounding board, and knowing that you helped someone else succeed gives you enormous satisfaction. You love coaching people to do their best, seeing people’s strengths and talents and drawing it out of them even more.

You’re big on follow-through — when creating a plan you take pride in delivering excellent results while exceeding expectations on deadlines.

You are extremely resourceful and great at playing detective — you can unravel any problem and figure out what’s really going on, what the missing pieces are, and go out and find them.

You do NOT thrive on being micromanaged and love to be given the freedom to excel in your job — being your own boss within an organization is a dream come true for you.

You are open, direct, and straightforward — you believe that honesty, awareness, and ownership are the direct routes to problem solving.

You’d rather not play the “blame game,” but instead just correct the issue and keep moving — you are a solution-based thinker who investigates why things went wrong with the goal of improving the process. You believe that a process problem lies at the root of every apparent people problem. Your positive attitude helps keep morale high and the team moving forward.

It is pretty impossible to faze you and you’re able to take a hit and keep rolling — your goal is to get it done, even if the path that gets there isn’t quite the one that you anticipated!

You’re a lifelong learner — you enjoy growing and seek out ways to hone your craft through books, podcasts, training and good ol’ Google searches.

You love learning new things — you enjoy stepping into new domains of knowledge with experts in those fields. You love to learn enough about what our clients do to understand the project and potential pitfalls, but you aren’t expected to become the expert in each client’s line of work.

You’re pretty good at Tetris — from sprint to sprint you’ll be organizing different projects at different sizes and fitting that into the team’s capacity, which ends up being a new puzzle each sprint. Setting up that game and then playing it sounds like fun to you.

About Us

Louder Agency is a digital marketing and web agency dedicated to helping purposeful brands make a positive impact on the world.

Louder Labs is the custom development arm of Louder Agency, a digital marketing and web agency dedicated to helping purposeful brands make a positive impact on the world. We are a fully remote company based in Louisville, KY with team members across the country. While we work with a variety of industries, we focus on serving ministries, live events, and other purposeful brands including online education and wellness applications. We believe in leveraging technology to facilitate meaningful human-to-human interactions.

We believe in being intentional—always seeking the why, choosing the best option, and doing the right thing even when it’s not easy. We care about what we do.

We are committed to always improving—always learning, growing, and never settling for the way things are today. We expect progress, not perfection.

We put people first. We strive to build relationships, be human, show empathy, and respect others. We keep priorities in mind, graciously taking care of ourselves and each other as we work together.

We set clear expectations. We communicate often and honestly. We do what we say and strive to exceed expectations.

We strive to live up to these ideals, creating a healthy environment where individuals and the team as a whole can do great work with great people.

Skills & Qualifications

• A strong and proven track record in project management on software development teams (2+ years at an agency a plus), leading communication between clients and creative teams.
• Organization skills are a must due to the number of projects that run concurrently.
• Ability to manage multiple projects, deadlines, and client relationships.
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills. 
• A working knowledge of web application and user experience best-practices.
• Ideal candidate has extensive experience in digital/web and/or agile software development workflows, with sincere interest in emerging creative techniques and trends.
• Demonstrated ability to combine strategic thinking with effective tactical execution.
• The ability to embrace and learn new technology quickly is essential. Candidates who know their way around Jira, Slack, and Google Drive will have a head start.
• Experience in managing ongoing, Agile projects
• Experience planning and writing User Stories from Business Requirements is a plus
• An eye for detail to ensure that what’s built matches clients’ needs and expectations