Program Director

As a Program Director at MetaLab you'll be a homebase for our clients and our teams. You're not in the design or engineering files, but you're the superglue that holds it all together and ensures that both our clients and our internal team are always aware of where things stand. You've worked on large projects and programs where multiple tracks of design, engineering, and requirements gathering are the norm. You also understand the need for both the 100,000 foot view that a C-Suite client needs to see and a 10,000 ft view that product managers on the ground need.

From the start of projects right through until handover you are the person that keeps the rhythm and communication going for our teams and clients and you can present an executive summary to a client like it's just another day.

Your responsibilities:

• Establish the communication cadence for our projects based on our client and team needs; taking into consideration things like timezone, mode of communication, and travel needs.
• Create the initial project plan including things like: detailed schedule, milestones and dependencies, progress tracking, risk identification and mitigation, and definition of done.
• Create progress reports for our clients both at an executive level and project team level including information about % complete, successes, risks and risk mitigation, all in a digestible format for anyone reading it.
• Effectively communicate project needs, requirements or escalations to MetaLab leadership.
• Identify risks, define impacts, provide solutions to address concerns and communicate issues to both internal MetaLab stakeholders In partnership with product, design and engineering leadership ensure that the technical and strategic vision are executed on time, at MetaLab quality standards and on budget.
• Ensure all disciplines within the team (product, design, engineering, research) are tracking towards our desired outcomes.
• Know when to escalate risks and deliver concise summaries including recommendations for mitigation to risk.

The must-have short list:

• Experience working on large scale consumer or b2b projects with multiple tracks of work and dependencies. Must be able to showcase in market products as examples.
• 7+ years of experience of working with design, engineering and product teams.
• Ability to work within software development tools such as Jira, Confluence, Notion, ProductBoard and Smartsheet.
• Appreciation for design and the ability to facilitate collaboration across design, development and product teams.
• Experience creating program reporting for executive level and day-to-day clients and teams.
• Experience running status meetings, team standups and comfortable presenting to executive stakeholders.
• Must be able to communicate both verbally and written to technical and non-technical stakeholders in a manner where no matter who it is they are able to quickly and easily understand things like project status, risks and suggested mitigations.
• Very experienced in all things budget management - including estimation, revenue recognition reporting and implications to budget from things like resourcing or scope changes.
• Strong experience and understanding of risk management to anticipate, identify and mitigate potential risks associated with the project and product delivery.
• An overall very collaborative and positive attitude that is able to motivate a team during tough times and celebrate successes during good times.