Senior Project Manager

OVERVIEW

OnTrac is seeking a Senior Project Manager to serve as the Product Owner on Google Cloud Platform application development engagements for clients ranging from the Fortune 500 to government. You will own the product vision, shape the roadmap, and make sure the Scrum team delivers the highest-value outcomes in every sprint and Program Increment. At times you will act as Product Owner, Project Manager and, when the engagement needs it, Scrum Master, and you will be trusted to do all three at a high level.

You will own the product vision and roadmap, run discovery with real users, and make hard prioritization calls that tie directly to client mission outcomes. You will also own delivery: schedule, budget, scope, risk, and team performance. You will partner with UX researchers and designers, engineers, architects, and executives across the delivery organization, the cloud provider, and the client to turn complex needs into working, accessible, measurable software across sprints and Program Increments.

This is a senior leadership role for an elite practitioner. You will set the standard for product ownership and Agile delivery, mentor Project Managers and Product Owners, shape pre-sales and scoping, and help evolve the PMO Center of Excellence.

The ideal candidate is decisive, strategic, user-centered, analytical, and poised with executives. You have a track record of delivering outcomes in client-service environments, take high ownership, and hold yourself to a high bar.

ENGAGEMENT

• Location: United States, fully remote

PRIMARY DUTIES

These duties are representative rather than exhaustive.

• Product Vision and Strategy: Define, communicate, and continuously refine the product vision, goals, and multi-release roadmap in alignment with client mission outcomes.

• Product Discovery: Lead discovery through stakeholder interviews, user research, journey mapping, and hypothesis testing. Validate problems and solutions before committing engineering capacity.

• UX Partnership: Partner with UX researchers and designers. Build usability testing results and accessibility requirements into the backlog and acceptance criteria.

• Backlog Ownership: Own the Product Backlog end to end across epics, features, and stories, with clear acceptance criteria and a transparent ordering rationale.

• Prioritization and Value Delivery: Make trade-off decisions using value, risk, cost, and dependencies, applying frameworks such as WSJF, RICE, or MoSCoW, and defend those decisions with executives. Maximize the value of the product and act as the bridge between business stakeholders, customers, and the Scrum team.

• SAFe Leadership: Lead product ownership within an Agile Release Train. Lead and contribute to PI Planning, System Demos, and Inspect and Adapt. Define features and benefit hypotheses, and work with Product Management, System Architects, and Release Train Engineers on dependencies and capacity.

• Project Management: Own end-to-end delivery. Build and maintain the plan, schedule, budget, resource plan, and milestones against the SOW, and lead kickoff, status reporting, and closeout.

• Scrum Master Leadership: When serving as the Scrum Master, facilitate all Scrum ceremonies, keep them time-boxed and outcome-focused, coach the team on self-organization, and drive continuous improvement through effective retrospectives.

• Impediment Removal and Team Health: Identify and remove impediments, resolve conflicts, and monitor velocity, flow, and team health. Lead and motivate engineers and architects across infrastructure modernization, data engineering, and application development.

• Client Advisory: Act as a trusted advisor to client leadership. Frame options and trade-offs, guide decisions, and build confidence at every level from engineers to C-level executives.

• Scoping, Estimating, and Pre-Sales: Lead opportunity qualification, discovery workshops, solution scoping, and estimates. Contribute to SOWs, proposals, and statements of objectives.

• Commercial and Scope Management: Manage scope against the SOW, identify changes early, draft change requests, and protect margin and utilization while keeping the client successful.

• Risk, Issue, and Change Management: Maintain RAID logs, run steering committees, escalate early, and report health, forecasts, and financials to delivery leadership, the cloud provider, and the client.

• Outcome Metrics: Define success measures such as adoption, task success, satisfaction, cycle time, and delivery predictability, and report value delivered, risks, and trends.

• Role Balance: Be explicit about which role you are in, keep decisions transparent, and escalate when the combined load puts delivery at risk.

• Coaching and Mentorship: Mentor Project Managers, Product Owners, and Scrum Masters on discovery, backlog management, facilitation, and stakeholder engagement.

• Practice Leadership: Be a change agent. Help evolve the PMO Center of Excellence, reusable delivery assets, and the practice's product ownership and Agile delivery standards.

REQUIRED CREDENTIALS

• Bachelor's degree in a related field (advanced degree a plus).

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• At least 10 years of experience in a technical, engineering, or software development environment. Client-facing consulting experience is required.

• At least 6 years of direct product ownership or product management experience, owning the roadmap, backlog, and outcomes of a digital product through multiple releases.

• At least 5 years of IT consulting or professional services experience in a client-facing delivery role.

• At least 5 years of experience managing IT or cloud deployment projects end to end, including planning, budgeting, risk management, and executive status reporting.

• At least 3 years of experience as a Scrum Master or Agile delivery lead, with a proven ability to facilitate all Scrum ceremonies, remove impediments, and coach teams.

• Experience leading teams of engineers and architects across multiple disciplines.

• Experience scoping and estimating work, contributing to SOWs or proposals, and managing scope and change requests against a contract.

• SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager certification and an additional advanced SAFe certification (SAFe Agilist, SAFe Scrum Master, or Release Train Engineer).

• Hands-on participation in at least 3 SAFe projects or Agile Release Trains, including leading or co-leading PI Planning.

• Demonstrated experience running product discovery and working with UX research and design teams.

• Working knowledge of UX principles, usability testing, design systems, and accessibility standards.

• Experience defining product metrics and using data to drive decisions.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, negotiation, and conflict-resolution skills, with a record of influencing C-level executives.

• Proficiency with Jira, Confluence, and Smartsheet, including project plans, dashboards, and reporting.

• Strong analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills.

• A positive attitude toward change and the ability to adapt.

• A love for cloud computing.

USEFUL QUALIFICATIONS

• Project management certifications (PMP, PMI-ACP, or equivalent).

• CSPO, CSM, or product management certifications.

• Experience delivering and managing Google Cloud or other public cloud projects.

• Consulting experience at a cloud partner, systems integrator, or advisory firm.

• Experience in the government sector.

• Experience supporting pre-sales, solution architecture, or proposal development.

• Experience with design thinking, Figma, or similar design tools.

• Business systems analysis certification or experience.

• Experience with distributed teams.

• Experience leading workshops and training.

PATHWAY TO SUCCESS

Be prepared, work with intentional effort, and offer no surprises for our clients and teammates. Your success starts with shaping the direction of a fast-growing practice with vision and passion. You will be measured each quarter on the breadth, magnitude, and quality of your contributions, business and user value delivered, estimate and forecast accuracy, on-time and on-budget delivery, team health, utilization, customer feedback at project close, mentorship of others, and the consultative polish you bring to customer interactions. As you succeed, we will build a development plan with you that follows either the individual contributor or the management track.

EXPECTATIONS

• Client Engagement: Serve as a key strategic partner and primary point of contact for client stakeholders, leading workshops, discovery sessions, PI Planning, and executive reviews.

• Consulting Environment: Thrive in a fast-paced, billable consulting environment, driving client outcomes while keeping scope, delivery schedules, and team utilization balanced.

• Versatile Delivery Leadership: While your primary focus is product ownership, you will adapt your approach to each client's scale, combining product vision, consultative delivery leadership, and project oversight as needed.

• Onboarding and Support: Structured onboarding, tool access, and practice support help you get up to speed quickly and set you up for long-term success from day one.