Technical Project Manager (based in UK, Reading)

ABOUT US

Sand Technologies is a global leader in digital transformation, empowering leading organisations and governments worldwide to achieve their digital aspirations. 

We offer a comprehensive suite of services, including enterprise AI solutions, data science, software engineering, and IoT, delivered from our centres in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. 

Our training programmes, in partnership with organisations like the Mastercard Foundation, Amazon Web Services, Holberton, and ALX cultivate the next generation of agile digital leaders.

Through recent strategic acquisitions, Sand Technologies has further strengthened its capabilities in advanced analytics and intelligent software development, enhancing our ability to solve our clients' most pressing challenges across telecom, utilities, healthcare, and insurance industries. 

We believe in harnessing technology to deliver real impact and value, helping organisations bridge the gap between their current reality and digital future.

ABOUT THE TEAM

We're on the hunt for a Technical Project Manager who has experience with software groups and multidisciplinary teams. You'll be responsible for shaping, defining, managing, and delivering a coherent set of activities across one or more projects within the Data Engineering team reporting into a Head of Data Engineering. You will need to be able to define project scope, outcomes and run the project/s to the expected standards of time, quality and budget whilst engaging and managing the project/s wider stakeholders.

This role is fully accountable for the successful execution of medium-scale projects, with budgets that will vary from £500k to £5m., typically with direct business impact and strict deadlines. It involves risk identification, assessment, and management, along with maintaining realistic project plans and ensuring regular, accurate communication with stakeholders. The role adopts suitable project management methodologies, be it predictive (plan-driven) or adaptive (iterative/agile). This role will help understand the project requirements coming into the team and assist in triaging and prioritising deliverables with the Head of Data Engineering. It ensures timely and procedural quality reviews, manages change control, and ensures project deliverables are completed within the agreed cost, timescale, and resource budgets, and are formally approved. The role provides effective leadership to the project team and takes necessary action when team performance deviates from agreed standards.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Key Responsibilities:
  1. Lead and manage project activities and delivery team/s
  - Define and baseline the project’s scope, plan and budget that will successfully deliver the business outcomes / objectives.
  - Identify, engage, and manage direct and indirect stakeholders appropriately in context of their role within the project/s.
  - Establish and manage regular project review meetings covering cost, schedule, resources, RAID and RAG statuses.
  
  2. Effective management of risks, issues, and costs
  - Identify and manage RAID items within the project and escalate where appropriate.
  - Manage project change (scope, time, budget) within agreed tolerances or escalate changes to the project control board/s.
  
  3. Follow agreed governance standards across the project/s lifecycle/s
  - Attend project initiation workshops and creation of any associated material to instigate a new project.
  - Create project closure reports and lead lessons learned workshops.
  
  
  Essential Experience
  1. 2+ years’ experience of Digital / IT project management delivery role
  2. Experience of financial management up to £1m per annum
  3. Experience of Agile and/or Product Management delivery methodologies
  4. Direct line management experience and advantage but not essential
  5. Delivery of both infrastructure and / or application projects
  6. Delivery of projects through the full lifecycle
  7. Management of multiple disciplinary project teams
  8. Management of suppliers and third parties
  
  
  Essential Technical Skills & Qualifications
  1. SAFe Practitioner, Scrum Master or equivalent.
  2. PRINCE 2 Practitioner or equivalent
  3. Selection of appropriate project delivery and commercial approaches
  4. Ability to manage and work with additional project resources from potentially multiple Service Integrators
  5. Skill at managing stakeholders and balancing diplomacy and tact with assertiveness
  6. Use of MS Project, MS Excel, and MS Word
  7. Delivery of projects in a Data Warehousing environment
  8. Based in UK and able to travel every Thursday to work from the office in Reading.
   
  Desirable Experience
  1. ITIL v3/v4 or equivalent
  2. PRINCE 2 Practitioner
  3. APMP
  4. Degree
  5. Data focused with experience of EDW/EDP, Azure, SAP
  
  Desirable Technical Skills & Qualifications
  1. Certification/experience of SaaS (software as a service) and/or cloud-based application management
  2. Certification/experience of DevOps tools, processes, and methodology.

WHAT WE OFFER:

• A culture that values bold ideas and embraces change.
• The opportunity to make a tangible impact on our customers and the actual growth of the business.
• A team of passionate, skilled professionals who are eager to collaborate and innovate.
• Hybrid and flexible work.