Technical Project Manager

**The Team**

This is an exciting opportunity to take a central role in our innovative and expanding POLS UK division. We work with world-leading universities throughout the UK to take their qualifications online, enabling them to reach global audiences in the comfortof their own homes. Each university partner is supported by their own dedicated operational business unit, across research, marketing, recruitment, course design and student success services, to support our shared goals for high quality student experiencesand outcomes as well as central teams to support in cross functional/partnership work.

**The Role**

This role is working in the central cross functional/partnership team providing technical project management support to our senior technical project manager in the scoping, implementation, and delivery of technical and systems projects. The role will owntheir own projects and be responsible for driving and delivery of this work.

**General Responsibilities**
- Scope, drive and deliver technical systems projects
- Maintain the project controls and use them to drive the delivery of the project, putting project controls in place
- manage adherence to plan and resolving obstacles to delivery
- Identifying what roles and responsibilities are required for the project on a regular basis
- Ensure the right level of governance is in place to achieve project objectives
- Risks/Issue management driving actions to mitigate or resolve
- Understand and manage project finances
- Understand and monitor project dependencies
- Monitor and control scope, resources, cost, time, risk and quality against the plan
- Regular reporting to senior management and stakeholders - daily, weekly, fortnightly (after each Sprint), monthly, quarterly etc.
- Prepare and conduct requirements workshops, to confirm and document scope, objectives, success criteria and detailed requirements of project with all key users
- Be primary point of contact for all project related questions
- Undertake business analysis including developing business requirements, user stories, wireframes etc.
- Coordinate and manage the development process, oversee, and conduct User Acceptance Testing and manage the deployment and implementation.
- Participate in system testing and producing user manuals
- Set up and maintain the repository of documentation for each stage of the project lifecycle, ensuring that all documentation has a clear purpose in driving the project forward
- Implement best practices and procedures in project management within the project and contribute to the continuous improvement of the project management toolkit.
- Ensure all change activities are incorporated into the plan and that there is a communications plan that includes channels to stakeholders.

**Skills & knowledge required**:

- Previous experience managing technical projects through the full project lifecycle with internal and/or external stakeholders.
- Previous salesforce experience.
- A technical understanding of IT infrastructure and technology development / deployment
- Demonstrable experience and in-depth knowledge of project practices and standards
- Demonstrable experience with regard to Project Managing moderate sized projects with offshore manpower
- Ability to plan and manage a complex workload and meet deadlines
- A proven track record of working with globally based external vendors, internal technical and business resources, ensuring a comprehensive, robust plan and project delivery
- Previous experience of Higher Education desirable.
- PRINCE2 /Agile Project Management.
- Experience with regard to Business Analysis requirements collection, and process/workflow analysis skills
- Great attention to detail, excellent organisational & project management skills.
- Ability to resolve issues swiftly and decisively whilst safeguarding standards and procedures
- Strong influencing and negotiating skills, ensuring consistent messaging
- Someone who builds excellent working relationships with cross functional teams internally.
- Builds great relationships with external stakeholders and can resolve issues.
- Strong team leadership abilities with the ability to motivate and mobilise individuals outside their reporting line
- Diplomatic communicator.
- Excellent written and verbal communication.
- Ability to assess priority issues
- Work effectively in a very fast paced changing environment
- The ability to multi-task, and work well under pressure with tight timelines
- A passion for technology