Y Media Labs - Program Manager

YML is a design and digital product agency. We create innovative products that export Silicon Valley to the world.

Since 2009, we have led early-stage startups and top-tier brands to "wow" their customers with best-in-class digital products and experiences. Our work has created category leaders in retail (The Home Depot) and insurance (State Farm), as well as laid the digital foundation for the next generation of Fortune 500 companies (Credit Karma, PayPal, Mercari and more).

Our bread and butter is in digital products, prototypes, customer experience, service design, and moment mapping. Our work has been recognized by Steve Jobs (ya, that Steve Jobs) and featured by TED Talks, in The Wall Street Journal ("YML is one of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley"), Forbes, Ad Age, ABC,CNBC and more.

We are not a marketing agency. No campaigns. No media buying. We create products and experiences that make a lasting impact, ranging from Molekule (the 2016 Time Invention of the Year) to Universal Music Artists (now a Webby award-winning app) to building the future of Google's AI with Tensorflow (really).

We started as a team of two, now we're 400+ strong. We have six offices on three continents and are headquartered in Silicon Valley (remote positions available).

Our team in Bangalore is 300+ strong, and we are growing in a variety of ways as we strive to achieve a culture of excellence.

Our program management group drives a seamless product delivery that will delight our clients and their customers. Working in collaboration with our engineering, design and quality assurance teams, you will build software that solves real-world problems. You are a passionate advocate for software quality, its role in our society and its relationship to technology. You possess outstanding project management skills, ability to lead a multidimensional program(s) within a brand ecosystem, and a solid understanding of contemporary tools and product methodologies.

Key Responsibilities :

This role will focus on planning, directing and coordinating projects from initiation through to implementation.

- Develop and deliver project management program encompassing all the details of the program to the clients, internal stakeholders, YML executives and team members.

- Timeline and Release schedule

- Risk/Issues/Dependencies/Change Management

- Accurate communication and Collaboration with all

- Metrics reporting

- Establishing Cadence

- Providing right training/guidance

- Guidance on Monitoring and Tracking

- Guidance and Review Reporting

- Guidance on PM skills

- Review and manage a continuous improvement process across the account for all projects.

- Perform regular project reviews and report metrics for continuous improvement and operational excellence.

- Manage project managers by:

- Setting Key Result Areas and expectations for each team member

- Setting the right processes that will be followed for each program and socializing with team

- Supervising and monitoring team performance - Timely 1-1s and feedbacks

- Reviewing performance and recommending appropriate actions

- Identifying and recommending staff augmentation and development requirements

- Keeping a tab on burnout and attrition levels

- Coach and conduct training/workshops for engineering teams and project management team on various agile frameworks and usage of various agile project management tools.

- Meet financial objectives by forecasting requirements; having accurate data on the team and their claims against the project estimates.

- Collate, create materials for driving delivery reviews, quarterly business review and weekly status reports for clients and internal stakeholders (including YML executive team).

- Participate / conduct defect triage, sprint, releases and program retrospectives.

- Achieves operational objectives by contributing information and recommendations to strategic plans and reviews, preparing and completing action plans, implementing production, productivity, quality, and customer-service standards, problems resolution, completing audits, identifying trends, determining system improvements, implementing change.

- Drive process improvement program wide initiatives.

- Provide coaching and guidance to the PM and engineering teams about every aspect of the project so that the team members can understand their tasks fully and act on them efficiently.

- Keep an eye on the latest strategies, tools and terminologies used in project management worldwide so that he/she may also adopt them and implement.

- Identify lean periods and raise flags in advance to allow identification of new projects, ensuring resource optimisation.

- Participate in contracts and negotiations.

- Manage risks by:

- Identifying risks

- Strategizing risk mitigation, transference and acceptance.

- Monitoring and addressing risk events through program level dashboards.

- Monitor and report program progress by:

- Meeting business reporting requirements like WSR(Weekly Status Report) and WPR(Weekly Project Review)

- Measuring performance versus plan (For eg: Sprint goal to completion, DIR, DDD etc)

- Maintaining and reviewing project plans using agile project management tools working alongside project managers for prompt action.

- Ensuring technical quality and appropriate sign off at every stage of the project.

What we are looking for

- Preferably a BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering.

- 12+ years of overall experience with 5 years of project and program management.

- Must have been a developer or QA engineer at some point in the past. No prior technical software development experience could be grounds for rejection.

- Ability to effectively interpret Technical and Business objectives from the clients' perspective as well as challenges and support the team on their deliverables.

- Prior experience directly interacting with or working with clients across the world is a must.