Posted about 5 years ago

 

Canonical Engagement Project Managers are responsible for project success that enables technical cloud managed service sales. We are looking for a customer facing, team player who lives within a commuting distance of Tokyo, Japan, to fully own/drive projects and navigate complex engineering solutions. This role requires demonstrated timely, precise and thorough communication skills. We anticipate and solve problems working with and managing internal business partners, external partners and customers, engineers, engineering managers, sales engineers, sales executives, cloud architects, consultants, legal, sales operations, external third parties, executives, and anyone and everyone necessary to define, control, execute, and close everything in a project. The Engagement Project Manager will own, drive and communicate until the project succeeds and so that it succeeds. Within a portfolio of projects with complex and changing technologies, customer and partner satisfaction is only possible with an exceptional Engagement Project Manager.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities:

• Successful delivery of professional engineering services assigned projects.
• Assist in development of a project statement of work and RFI/RFP response.
• Actively participate in commercial reviews.
• Draft and maintain project specific schedules / project plans.
• Obtain client agreement to the project schedule and agreed to work items.
• Ensure projects are delivered within the time/resources/scope expectations.
• Manage project risk mitigation and plans.
• Conduct weekly status meetings and quarterly business reviews with customers for assigned custom engineering projects. Customer status meetings will take the form of teleconferences and at times face to face meetings.
• As needed, maintain daily communication with the client via email, shared wikis and other means.
• As needed, manage the delivery schedule of critical third party deliverables for the project Identify custom engineering requests that are not part of an existing business contracts
• Managing assigned projects through their life-cycles.
• Keep management informed of the status of assigned custom engineering projects.
• Effectively manage customer relationships for cutting-edge projects.
• Advocate to customers the appropriate technologies from Canonical's portfolio.
• The candidate will be expected to deliver upon a very broad range of Ubuntu based projects.
• The candidate will be expected to support different timezones and work non-traditional hours as required to support the assigned projects.

REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

• Excellent communications skills, both verbal and written, in English and Japanese.
• Mandarin language skills preferred
• Extensive experience successfully managing projects with cross-cultural and multi-continent internal and external project resources, preferably with resources in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
• Strong communicator that is comfortable in a customer facing pre-sales role managing complex enterprise technical projects.
• Strong leader and problem solver with extensive experience building successful internal and external partnerships and effective working relationships with demanding project sponsors in complex organizational environments.
• Self-starting senior level professional who "makes things happen" with experience successfully anticipating issues and risks and effectively managing project stakeholders to work together as a team to resolve issues.
• Fundamental understanding of the five project management process groups and full accountability to continuously stay on top of the known triple constraint (or project management triangle).
• Excellent understanding of and ability to manage key shared (non-dedicated) technical and business stakeholder roles and responsibilities in service delivery projects (including internal business partners, external partners and customers, engineers, engineering managers, sales engineers, sales executives, cloud architects, consultants, legal, sales operations, external third parties, other technical managers, executives, etc.).
• Expert Gantt chart creation, project status reporting, and fundamental understanding and utilization of PM tools for support in project management activities.
• Familiarity with using ERP or time and labor systems for project cost analyses.
• Experience managing large-scale (>$1 million in project costs, over one-year duration) external-facing service delivery projects such as custom engineering, software development, or data center build-outs from initiation through closure.
• Experience managing projects with Linux/UNIX technology components (Support, Development, Implementation), understanding of IT data center architectures, server architectures, cloud technology, OpenStack, and/or FIPS or Common Criteria Certifications are preferred.
• Strong negotiation skills; exceptional intelligence.
• 15 years of project management experience in a computer or technical service field.
• Degree level education, preferably in a technical or problem-solving field.
• PMP/PMI, or PRINCE2 Practitioner Certification preferred.
• Knowledge of cloud, OpenStack, networking, and Linux preferred.
• Able to thrive in a changing organization and, as such, is also a change agent, able to work with the project management group Director and other PMO team members/managers to modify and improve his/her own roles and responsibilities as well as suggest other stakeholder improvements.
• Ability and willingness to travel occasionally domestically and internationally.
• As an experienced leader must have the ability to be extremely effective and manage project team members to also be productive in a globally distributed team.
• Ability to work non-standard work hours in support of a worldwide sales and project team

What Canonical Offers:

• Learning and Development
• Annual Compensation Review
• Recognition Rewards
• Annual Leave
• Priority Pass for travel
• Flexible working option