Staff Engineering Program Manager

Job Summary:

The Engineering Program Manager (EPM) function within the Customer Platforms and Insights (CPI) Program Management team bridges technical expertise with strategic oversight to ensure successful delivery of engineering projects and programs. EPMs collaborate with cross-functional teams-such as engineering developers, product management, and leadership-to define, manage, and deliver complex engineering projects that align with business goals. This function is integral to fostering transparency, clear communication, and alignment across teams while driving innovation in engineering practices and project management. The EPM ensures that all aspects of a project or program are executed efficiently, meeting deadlines, and achieving objectives.

This role is for a Staff-level EPM who will play a crucial role in supporting Senior EPMs with the end-to-end management of highly complex engineering programs. The Staff EPM will assist in strategic planning, execution, monitoring, and successful delivery by coordinating with cross-functional teams, driving key milestones, and ensuring alignment with business and technical objectives.

Your professional development and career growth are important to us. As a Staff EPM, you will also begin taking ownership of mid-sized projects with moderate complexity and limited supervision, contributing to technical decisions and working independently while collaborating across multiple teams.

The ideal candidate will have strong organizational and communication skills, the ability to work in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment, and experience managing engineering programs with multiple stakeholders.

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Responsibilities:

These tasks represent the responsibilities central to this EPM role within CPI Program Management, encompassing the core activities that define the position. These responsibilities may have varying degrees of support based on assignment.

• Senior EPM Team Support - Assist Senior-level EPMs in managing and organizing complex engineering programs by providing structured support across the EPM team for project organization, regular reporting, status updates, and process improvement.

• Stakeholder Communication: Act as a liaison between engineering teams and stakeholders across the business, ensuring transparency and effective communication on progress, challenges, and deliverables.

• Risk Management: Identify, assess, and mitigate risks, including potential delays and resource constraints, while proactively adjusting project plans.

• Dependency Coordination: Manage dependencies within and across projects and programs to ensure seamless execution.

• Release Coordination: Work with product managers, developers, QA, and other teams to plan and execute releases, ensuring alignment with business objectives and readiness of all stakeholders.

• Operational Efficiency: Establish and maintain efficient workflows and operational processes for engineering teams.

• Process Improvement: Support continuous improvement initiatives to improve processes and innovate engineering practices and project management techniques.

• Development Support: Remove roadblocks hindering development progress and resolve issues, escalating as necessary.

• Project Monitoring: Continuously track development progress against timelines. Tools like burn-down charts and daily standups are some commonly used approaches.

• Strategic Collaboration: Partner with Engineering Managers on strategic initiatives, long-term planning, and alignment with company objectives.

• Product & Engineering Alignment: Collaborate with product managers and stakeholders to align on requirements and deliverables, with responsibility for validating that requirements are sufficient to guide work.

• Cost Management: Help monitor budgets, manage WBS codes, and provide decision-making insights through variance analysis.

Note: This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all tasks performed by EPMs within CPI, but rather this should serve as a guide for the areas of responsibilities typically performed by EPMs.

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Key Skills and Expertise:

To succeed in the role, the Staff EPM will need to bring a combination of technical, organizational, and interpersonal skills that enable them to effectively manage projects and foster team collaboration.

• Demonstrates a solid grasp of engineering concepts and a moderate technical acumen of engineering principles, systems, and technologies to effectively collaborate across teams.

• Ability to independently manage technical trade-offs with sufficient knowledge to influence decisions within the project team.

• Ability to understand and evaluate product and technical requirements independently, with occasional support and oversight from Senior-level EPMs.

• Proficiency in project management methodologies (e.g., Agile, Scrum, Waterfall) and tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence, MS Project) to plan, execute, and monitor projects.

• Understands project dependencies and proactively identifys and manages common risks, developing early mitigation strategies.

• Ability to navigate different team dynamics and resolve basic conflicts when they arise.

• Exceptional communication skills to interact with stakeholders at all levels.

• Proficiency in risk management, process improvement, and strategic planning.

• Experience with coordinating a release schedule comprised of several features from multiple engineering teams

• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.

• Effective application of influential and direct leadership that aligns with the Maxar Intelligence Leadership Competency Model.

Minimum Experience Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Business, or a related technical field

• 5+ years experience in program/project management, with a focus on engineering or technical programs