Principal Consultant

Role Description

Annual planning, week six. The capacity spreadsheet has been emailed around so many times nobody can say which version is real. The stage-gate review runs ninety minutes, approves everything, and decides nothing. The platform that was supposed to fix all of this took a year to stand up, and half the organization still keeps its real plan in a slide deck. If you have lived that from either side of the table — as the consultant who delivered the platform or the Project Management Office (PMO) leader who ran it — none of that was wasted time. It is the qualification.

There is no SPM practice at Tempo yet. That is the job. Tempo’s modular portfolio enables businesses to focus on the biggest SPM needs without requiring a large, complex deployment. We are also bringing to market an AI-Native SPM platform that broadens and deepens SPM capabilities to move at the speed of AI.

What Tempo does not have is an in-house methodology, a named practice, or the person who owns them. You would be that person: player-coach, individual contributor first, practice builder throughout.

What you'll do:

• Deliver first. This seat earns its authority in the field.
• Run SPM implementations end to end, post-sale: discovery and maturity assessment, portfolio design (demand intake, capacity planning, prioritization, governance cadence), rollout, and adoption.
• Sit with PMO and portfolio leaders as a peer — the senior practitioner in the room, not the note-taker.
• Ask the questions that reveal where an organization sits on the maturity curve, from project tracking through portfolio governance to strategic planning, and design the engagement to move them one honest stage, not five imaginary ones.
• Translate legacy muscle memory into better experiences rather than mapping features one to one.
• Take occasional pre-sales pull-in on competitive displacement deals.
• Build the practice as you go.
• Write the methodology: Tempo's SPM implementation playbook, maturity model, and reference architectures.
• Build enablement for Customer Success (CS), sales, and partners so the practice scales past you.
• Feed field learning to product — providing context and connecting dots.
• Make the hiring case, then hire and lead a small team as the practice proves out.

To be explicit about what this is not: you will not write product code, you will not spend your days administering anyone's Jira instance, and this is not an engagement-coordination seat. Project-managing a rollout is table stakes here; guiding the customer's SPM journey is the job.

Qualifications

• Deep SPM implementation experience: multiple implementations of Planview, Clarity, Jira Align, ServiceNow SPM, Targetprocess, or equivalents.
• Native fluency in the buyer's language: demand management, capacity and scenario planning, investment funding, benefits realization, Lean Portfolio Management.
• A working mental model of the stages of project, portfolio, and strategic management maturity.
• Standing credibility with PMO directors and portfolio leaders.
• You could run an SPM implementation in your sleep.

Requirements

• Certifications that signal depth: Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Practice Consultant (SPC), Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP), Project Management Professional (PMP), or ServiceNow's Certified Implementation Specialist for SPM (CIS-SPM).
• Atlassian ecosystem experience: Solution Partner background or hands-on time with Tempo's products.
• Prior practice-building at a consultancy or a vendor services organization.

Benefits

• Remote First work environment.
• Unlimited vacation in most of our locations.
• Great benefits including health, dental, vision and savings plan.
• Perks such as training reimbursement, WFH reimbursement, and more.
• Diverse and dynamic teams with challenging and exciting work.
• An opportunity to have a real impact on our business.
• A great range of social activities (both in person and virtual).
• Optional in person meet-ups and the ability to travel to our international offices.
• Employee referral program.
• And so much more!