Senior Director, R&D Project Management

Arctic Wolf, with its unicorn valuation, is the leader in security operations in an exciting and fast-growing industry—cybersecurity. We have won countless awards for our excellence in security operations and remain dedicated to providing an industry-leading customer and employee experience.

Our mission is simple: End Cyber Risk. We’re looking for a  Senior Director, R&D Project Management  to be a part of making this happen.

Location: Bangaluru, India

About the Role

The Senior Director, Project Management - Product, owns supervision pertaining to strategic management of resources, process, and people to drive maximum efficiency through the software development lifecycle. This is a strategic leadership role that identifies and pursues opportunities to increase efficiency of resource allocation, process execution and the product decision making processes. This leader manages comprehensive operational tracking and metrics for projects. This role manages a team that provides full coverage of projects in the products organization.

As a Senior Director, Project Management - Product, you will work with R&D teams to help drive agile software delivery. Occasionally, this will require a hands-on Project Manager role. As such, you will be working with R&D leaders to not only manage project delivery, but also focused on working with R&D leaders and the R&D Operations team to define and rollout project management best practices across R&D teams.

Accountable for organizing project teams to achieve exceptional results with a high-level of predictability and quality whilst delivering significant business value to customers. Expected to have knowledge and experience in blending traditional project management principles and practices with an Agile development approach to provide the right balance of agility and predictability.

Previous Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) project management experience required.

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Responsibilities

Responsible for managing, and setting direction for the project management tools, team and process.

Management over the strategic planning and execution process (Green Light). Manage consistent adoption of the process, highlight and work with teams to resolve issues to ensure effective and reliable plans. Key metric: steady improvement of delivery of projects to time and scope with high quality.

In partnership with leadership, provides strategic direction and oversight of resource allocation across engineering, budget, tools and initiatives to optimized allocations to our desired business outcomes.

Maintain a set of operational and strategic metrics across the product teams to measure performance to plan, continuous improvement initiatives (e.g. forecast to actual with analysis), identifying early and resolving issues in the execution process, and providing resolution optionality to senior leadership where needed. Develop, create and track project delivery key performance indicators (KPIs) through project dashboards and basic analytics, including burnup/burndown and velocity tracking.

Partners across Product Management and R&D teams to ensure dependencies are accounted for and aligned in project plans, other dependencies outside of the product organization are quantified and accounted for across business functions in order to ensure project/release value is fully realized.

Regular monitoring of the use of the process and tooling across teams to identify and resolve issues as early as possible from product management definition through engineering execution. Focus on process and continuous improvements of cross-functional collaboration.

Manages product release operational reviews in the business and provides data to support senior leadership reporting and decision making. Able to conduct post-mortem/retrospective, root cause and preventive action analysis to help teams continuously improve their practices to ensure maximum productivity.

Manages project management tooling and best practice within the organization.

Perform regular executive operational reporting and read-outs identifying project on or off track with action needed along with executive help or focus required.

Develop and manage end-to-end project plans and ensure on-time delivery that are consistent with best in class on time/to cost metrics.

Create and manage Product Delivery Plans (PDP) for all AWN projects. SDLC from GreenLight/Ideation/Concept through General Availablity including Ongoing Shipment & Support.

Expertise with respect to progress tracking/reporting, communications management, resource management, issues management, risk management, change management, vendor management and business alignment.

Manages large cross-functional initiatives and projects that span 30+ development teams with multiple milestones and deliverables. Has built strong relationships with R&D Directors and Executive management and a strong partnership with Product Program Management.

We value a culture of sharing, so every team has the opportunity to share their work with the entire department during our monthly R&D Demos. Once a year we hold a department-wide Hackathon, teaming up across all R&D teams over four days to collaborate and build cool ideas outside the normal project scope. While innovation is the focus, some of these ideas do make it into our products.

Key Skills:

Strong experience facilitating clear and effective communication between project teams, stakeholders and executive leadership.

Experience managing highly complex projects, developing strong working relationships with engineering teams, communicating and representing work to senior leadership and framing discussions to gain valuable feedback.

Able to drive checks and balances in our processes and identify issues while also fostering strong working relationships across the teams.

Analytical and problem-solving experience with large-scale systems.

Mastery of project and program management skills and methodologies.

Abilities to assess risk and drive change management at the program, project, and cross-functional levels. 

Experience with organizational design and building teams for scale.

Is dedicated to and can direct a team in meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers; gets first-hand customer information and uses it for defining and executing on products, services, themes, and initiatives; acts with customers in mind; establishes and maintains effective relationships with customers and gains their trust and respect.

Exceptional overall communication skills all the way through and outside the organization up to the C-level.

Keen understanding of various aspects of the business and exceptional understanding of translating strategic goals into operational tactics.

Understanding of full-life cycle product and portfolio management with a special focus on product definition, development, and delivery.

Contributes to and often champions the development of departmental goals and objectives and often contributes to organizational goals. Formally coaches lower level and cross functional people leaders.

In addition, you have proven leadership experience from previous projects, regardless of title held. You have the ability to perform programming tasks and large engineering projects with Independence and expertise. You will be responsible for guiding and mentoring other staff members and will regularly lead technical projects. You have a high level of mastery over software development best practices and building reusable design patterns.

You have a history of delivering successful projects, as well as some lessons learned from failures. Even if you haven’t worked with all of our specific technologies, you bring a diverse knowledge base that you use to help the team solve complex technical problems. You’ll receive all the security training you need during our onboarding process and through additional training on the job.

Key Competencies:

Strong relationship and team building ability

Organizational Agility – strong competency to adjust plans to changing business conditions

Conflict Management – able to prevent and diffuse conflicts efficiently

Technical competency – experienced leading highly complex, technical projects

Organization skills – highly organized to drive people and systems across the organization to consistent process and outcomes

Highly analytical – able to structure data to identify causes, issues and effectively solution issues

About You:

Has built strong relationships with R&D Directors and Executive management and a strong partnership with Product Program Management.

Leveraged experience to identify potential project risks and proactively mitigate them.

Proactively communicates status, risks and successes to all stakeholders where appropriate.

Manages large cross-functional initiatives and projects that span 30+ development teams with multiple milestones and deliverables.

Keen focus on continuous improvements for R&D processes.

Led project teams to deliver high-value features in partnership with product management.

Driven effective teamwork, communication, collaboration and commitment across multiple groups with competing priorities.

In addition, you have proven leadership experience from previous projects, regardless of title held. You have the ability to perform programming tasks and large engineering projects with Independence and expertise. You will be responsible for managing, guiding and mentoring other staff members and will regularly lead technical projects. You have a high level of mastery over software development best practices and building reusable design patterns.

You have a history of delivering successful projects, as well as some lessons learned from failures. Even if you haven’t worked with all of our specific technologies, you bring a diverse knowledge base that you use to help the team solve complex technical problems. You’ll receive all the security training you need during our onboarding process and through additional training on the job.

Interview Process

Phone Screen: A member of the recruiting team will be in touch for an initial conversation around your work history and an overview of Arctic Wolf Manager Assessment: You will meet with the hiring manager for the role. We will review your previous work experience and discuss what project management at Arctic Wolf looks like. We will ask questions related to your ability to perform the role. Interviews with the team: You’ll meet with several of our team members over the course of three interviews conducted remotely over Zoom. This is an opportunity to learn more about the specific role and team you will work with. Come prepared to talk more about past projects and your career goals.

We know your time is important, so we try to streamline the process as much as possible while respecting your current life commitments.

About Arctic Wolf

At Arctic Wolf we’re cultivating a collaborative and productive work environment that welcomes a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, and ideas to make our teams even stronger as we grow globally. We’ve been named one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world for 2022 (Fast Company)—and the 2nd Most Innovative Security Company. This is in addition to consecutive awards from Top Workplace USA (2021, 2022), Best Places to Work - USA (2021, 2022) and Great Place to Work - Canada (2021, 2022). 

Our Values

Arctic Wolf recognizes that success comes from delighting our customers, so we work together to ensure that happens every day. We believe in diversity and inclusion, and truly value the unique qualities and unique perspectives all employees bring to the organization. And we appreciate that—by protecting people’s and organizations’ sensitive data and seeking to end cyber risk— we get to work in an industry that is fundamental to the greater good. 

We celebrate unique perspectives by creating a platform for all voices to be heard through our Pack Unity program. We encourage all employees to join or create a new alliance. See more about our Pack Unity .

We also believe and practice corporate responsibility, and have recently joined the Pledge 1% Movement, ensuring that we continue to give back to our community. We know that through our mission to End Cyber Risk we will continue to engage and give back to our communities. 

All wolves receive compelling compensation and benefits packages, including:

Equity for all employees

Bonus or commission pay based on role

Flexible time off, paid volunteer days and paid parental leave

401k match

Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance

Health Savings and Flexible Spending Agreement

Voluntary Legal Insurance

Training and career development programs

Arctic Wolf is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetics, or any other basis forbidden under federal, provincial, or local law. Arctic Wolf is committed to fostering a welcoming, accessible, respectful, and inclusive environment ensuring equal access and participation for people with disabilities. As such, we strive to make our entire employee experience as accessible as possible and provide accommodations as required for candidates and employees with disabilities and/or other specific needs where possible. Please let us know if you require any accommodations by emailing . 

Security Requirements

Conducts duties and responsibilities in accordance with AWN’s Information Security policies, standards, processes and controls to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of AWN business information (in accordance with our employee handbook and corporate policies).

Background checks are required for this position.

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