[Remote] Technical Program Manager

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. gWorks builds software that helps small local governments work better. As a Technical Program Manager for Data Engineering, you’ll coordinate complex data initiatives, collaborating with various stakeholders to ensure projects are executed efficiently and effectively.

Responsibilities

• Own the planning, execution, and delivery of data engineering projects, including pipeline development, schema migrations, platform integrations, and data quality initiatives
• Define and maintain project plans, milestones, and dependencies in Jira, ensuring work is accurately tracked and consistently reflected across epics, stories, and sprints
• Lead sprint ceremonies — planning, standup, review, and retrospective — for data engineering teams, facilitating discussions and driving toward actionable outcomes
• Proactively identify blockers, surface trade-offs, and escalate risks before they become delivery problems
• Manage project scope and change requests with discipline, maintaining alignment between technical execution and business intent
• Serve as the primary coordination layer between data engineering and the engineering, analytics, product, and operations teams that depend on its outputs
• Translate business requirements from non-technical stakeholders into well-scoped technical work, and communicate technical decisions and trade-offs back in terms stakeholders can act on
• Build and maintain lightweight RACI structures and communication norms across projects to reduce ambiguity and keep everyone aligned
• Facilitate cross-team prioritization conversations, especially where data deliverables are on the critical path of a larger product or engineering initiative
• Design and maintain team and project metrics reports using Jira, covering velocity, throughput, cycle time, sprint completion rates, and SLA adherence for data pipelines
• Build and own recurring reporting cadences — weekly status updates, executive dashboards, and quarterly program reviews — that give leadership clear, accurate visibility into data engineering health and progress
• Partner with data engineers to instrument pipeline monitoring and tie operational health metrics into project-level reporting
• Use metrics to identify systemic inefficiencies, recurring blockers, or estimation drift, and bring data-driven recommendations to planning
• Own and continuously improve the team’s ways of working — Jira hygiene standards, sprint norms, documentation practices, and intake processes for new project requests
• Develop and maintain internal playbooks for common project types (e.g., new pipeline builds, data migrations, client onboarding workflows) to reduce ramp time and increase consistency
• Help the data engineering team operate with more autonomy by reducing process overhead, improving tooling, and keeping noise away from technical work

Skills

• 5+ years of experience in technical program management, with direct ownership of software or data engineering programs
• Deep, hands-on proficiency with Jira — including advanced board configuration, JQL, custom fields, workflow automation, and building reports and dashboards using built-in tools or Jira's reporting APIs
• Demonstrated experience building and owning project and team metrics programs — not just tracking tasks, but designing reporting frameworks that drive decisions
• Sufficient technical depth in data engineering to hold substantive conversations with engineers about pipeline architecture, orchestration, data quality, and schema design — and to understand the implications of technical decisions on project timelines
• Proven track record of coordinating complex, cross-functional projects across engineering, product, analytics, and business stakeholders
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — you write clear status updates, facilitate productive meetings, and adapt your communication style for technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience with agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid), including running ceremonies and continuously improving team process
• Comfort with ambiguity and a bias toward action — you drive clarity rather than waiting for it
• Hands-on experience with AWS data services (Step Functions, Glue, S3, Athena, Lambda) at a conceptual or operational level
• Familiarity with data lakehouse concepts, medallion architecture, or data quality frameworks (Great Expectations, Soda)
• Experience working in a GovTech, SaaS, or data-platform company
• Exposure to Confluence, Notion, or similar tools for managing team documentation alongside Jira
• Experience with data observability or pipeline monitoring tools (Monte Carlo, Datafold, or similar)

Benefits

• Full medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) with company match
• PTO and paid holidays
• A collaborative team culture that values autonomy, growth, and execution

Company Overview

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