Project Manager

As the Project / Delivery Manager, you will own end-to-end Agile delivery governance, planning, and execution while fostering strong communication between client stakeholders and Perennial teams. The ideal candidate brings 4-5 years of experience across project/program management, Agile delivery, and stakeholder engagement, with solid technical and engineering awareness to operate credibly alongside engineering leadership.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Agile Delivery Leadership:

• Champion Agile principles and foster a culture of continuous improvement across delivery teams.
• Coach Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and engineering teams on Agile best practices.
• Ensure consistent adoption of Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid delivery frameworks.

Sprint and Release Governance:

• Facilitate effective sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Drive predictable sprint execution and release planning through data-driven delivery management.
• Monitor sprint health and delivery predictability using Agile metrics.

Stakeholder and Vendor Management:

• Act as the primary point of contact for project stakeholders, sponsors, clients, and vendors.
• Build and maintain strong relationships across client and internal teams; manage expectations and resolve conflicts.
• Lead executive communication, governance reviews, and escalation management.

Delivery Planning and Execution:

• Own end-to-end SDLC delivery planning — sprint planning, release planning, resource & capacity planning, and budget/timeline management.
• Run Agile ceremonies (stand-ups, reviews, retrospectives) and drive continuous improvement and impediment removal.
• Apply Agile, Kanban, or hybrid (Agile + Waterfall) delivery models depending on project context.

Product and Engineering Alignment:

• Partner with Product Owners to ensure backlog readiness, prioritisation, and value-driven delivery.
• Balance business priorities with engineering capacity and technical debt.
• Drive incremental value delivery rather than milestone-based execution.

Strategic Oversight and Planning:

• Ensure alignment between client business objectives and project goals through strategic direction and prioritisation.
• Participate in planning discussions to identify opportunities where Perennial can add value; shape project plans with strategic insight.
• Contribute to client governance meetings and drive governance frameworks for transparency and accountability.

Risk, Flow and Escalation Management:

• Identify potential project risks and develop mitigation strategies; manage dependencies proactively.
• Identify delivery bottlenecks and flow constraints; remove team impediments proactively.
• Improve cross-team dependencies and delivery flow.
• Establish and monitor feedback cadences between client and Perennial stakeholders.
• Resolve issues/escalations promptly, with clear documentation, to minimise impact on timelines and deliverables.

Scaling Agile (Multi-Team Environments):

• Coordinate cross-functional Agile teams across the engagement.
• Drive PI Planning / Quarterly Planning using SAFe or similar frameworks where applicable.
• Manage dependencies across multiple Scrum teams.

Team Enablement:

• Mentor Scrum Masters and Delivery Leads.
• Facilitate conflict resolution within Agile teams.
• Foster psychological safety and high-performing teams.

Continuous Improvement:

• Conduct Agile health assessments and drive action items from retrospectives.
• Standardise Agile delivery practices across engagements.
• Introduce automation and Lean practices to improve delivery efficiency.

Engineering Excellence:

• Promote DevOps and CI/CD adoption.
• Ensure Definition of Ready (DoR) and Definition of Done (DoD) are consistently followed.
• Encourage quality-first practices, test automation, and shift-left testing.

Metrics, Process and Documentation:

• Own and report delivery metrics: Sprint Velocity, Predictability Index, Burndown/Burnup, Lead Time, Cycle Time, Flow Efficiency, Escaped Defects, Release Frequency, and Team Capacity and Utilisation.
• Track DORA metrics — Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, MTTR, and Change Failure Rate.
• Ensure proper documentation of requirements, plans, progress, and outcomes.
• Drive continuous improvement in project management processes and methodologies.
• Review project progress and ensure accountability through governance frameworks and performance metrics.

Outcome Expectations:

• Improve sprint predictability and release reliability.
• Increase delivery throughput while maintaining quality.
• Reduce cycle time and lead time.
• Improve stakeholder satisfaction through transparent Agile reporting.
• Drive continuous improvements through retrospective action plans.
• Establish scalable Agile governance across multiple teams and programs.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Engineering, or a related field.
• 4-5 years of experience in project/program management, Agile delivery, or similar roles.
• Proficiency with project management tools: JIRA, Confluence, Trello, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office; Azure DevOps and Power BI/dashboard reporting preferred.
• Strong grounding in SDLC, Agile (Scrum and Kanban), Waterfall, and hybrid delivery models.
• Hands-on experience running Agile ceremonies — sprint planning, backlog refinement, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives.
• Proven experience engaging senior business and engineering leaders, clients, and vendors.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, client-facing environment; experience managing regional or global IT projects.
• Strong understanding of project governance, risk & issue management, dependency management, and feedback mechanisms.
• Working knowledge of DevOps fundamentals, CI/CD concepts, API-based systems, cloud delivery, and QA processes.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication with the ability to mediate and resolve conflicts and manage escalations.
• Well-versed in ITIL frameworks and practices.
• Hands-on experience as an Agile Delivery Manager, Scrum Master, or Agile Program Manager.
• Strong understanding of Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and Agile-at-Scale frameworks (SAFe, LeSS, Nexus).
• Experience facilitating Scrum ceremonies across distributed teams.
• Ability to interpret Agile delivery metrics and drive continuous improvement.
• Experience working with Product Owners, Engineering Managers, and Architects.
• Knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD, and modern software engineering practices.
• Experience leading multiple concurrent Agile teams.
• Certifications such as PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM/PSM, or SAFe Agilist are a plus, not mandatory.