Technical Project Manager

About System Automation

System Automation (SA) is a software vendor based in the United States, specializing in systems that support government regulatory management operations. Founded in 1968 and originally contracted to develop the US Army recruiting system, SA has evolved into an industry leader in designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining comprehensive information management applications for government regulatory agencies across the United States.

SA currently supports state government agencies, licensing boards, and regulatory operations in 22 states across nearly 800 professions, occupations, and industries. With the launch of Evoke™ (the only cloud-native, low-code application platform purpose-built for regulatory management on Microsoft Azure Government) SA is entering an exciting period of rapid growth.

About The Role

This is not a conventional project management role. We are looking for a senior PM who has lived inside software delivery teams - someone who has written code, configured complex platforms, and understands from direct experience what it takes to move a custom software product from requirements to production.

The Sr. Technical Project Manager leads the end-to-end delivery of complex, multi-year custom software and enterprise low-code platform implementations on our Evoke platform. Our engagements involve highly regulated state government environments, politically sensitive stakeholder ecosystems, and technically demanding configuration-driven solutions. You will be expected to understand not just what is being built, but how it is being built - well enough to ask the right questions, identify risks early, and hold the team accountable to sound delivery practices.

Candidates who are strong project managers but cannot engage meaningfully at the technical level will struggle with the complexity of our engagements. Equally, candidates with strong technical credentials but limited experience managing multi-stakeholder government programs will not have the organizational command these projects require. Both dimensions matter.

Technical Engagement & Delivery Oversight

Engage meaningfully at the technical level on assigned projects - understanding how solutions are being designed and configured on the Evoke platform well enough to identify risks, ask informed questions, and provide useful pushback when the approach is unclear or unsound. This is not a design ownership role; it is an informed oversight role backed by real technical experience.

Review proposed solution approaches prior to build in collaboration with Solution Architects and Functional Consultants, raising concerns about gaps, misalignments with user stories, or risks before they are locked into the project plan. The expectation is not that you design the solution, but that you understand it well enough to challenge it constructively.

Work closely with Solution Architects and Functional Consultants throughout design and build phases, ensuring that delivery decisions are well-documented, traceable to user stories, and consistent with platform capabilities - including appropriate use of templates and reusable components.

Maintain working awareness of Azure Government constraints, data residency requirements, and compliance considerations relevant to the project environment, and ensure these factors are surfaced and accounted for during planning and design phases.

Stay current on platform releases and new Evoke functionality, proactively identifying opportunities to leverage emerging capabilities in active projects.

Translate complex technical trade-offs into clear, decision-ready communications for non-technical client stakeholders and executive sponsors.

Project & Program Management

Own the full project lifecycle: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure -across multi-year, multi-stakeholder government implementations.

Develop and maintain detailed, resource-loaded project schedules; set and manage milestones, resource allocations, and time budgets with precision.

Drive milestone completion and profitability targets in coordination with the Professional Services Manager and leadership team.

Proactively manage scope, identifying and escalating scope creep with documented analysis and recommended disposition before it affects budget or schedule.

Manage risk registers with rigor: identify, quantify, assign ownership, and track mitigation actions across the full project portfolio.

Produce accurate, professional-grade status reports and communications for both internal leadership and client-facing audiences.

Support business development by contributing to proposal scoping, effort estimation, and project plan development for prospective engagements.

Stakeholder Management & Client Engagement

Navigate complex stakeholder environments that frequently include competing interests, politically motivated demands, and shifting priorities across agency leadership, program staff, and end users.

Serve as the primary point of accountability for client relationships on assigned projects - maintaining trust even in difficult conversations around scope, timelines, and budget constraints.

Conduct structured weekly status meetings with client stakeholders; facilitate executive-level reviews with appropriate preparation and gravitas.

Collaborate internally with the Support Manager, Solution Architects, and functional leadership to coordinate resource utilization, resolve cross-functional issues, and ensure smooth transition to post-go-live support.

PMO & Quality Governance

Enforce delivery standards across the project team, including documentation quality, acceptance criteria rigor, and milestone completion gates.

Champion backlog prioritization discipline, ensuring that development effort is directed toward contractually mandated requirements in order of client value—with clear, well-specified acceptance criteria before any item enters the build queue.

Hold project team members accountable for task completion, quality of deliverables, and professional conduct in client-facing interactions.

Forecast milestone completion and financial burn in Workday Adaptive; surface early warnings when projects deviate from plan.

Required Qualifications

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a closely related STEM discipline is required.

Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Business Administration (with a technical concentration), or equivalent is strongly preferred.

Experience

Minimum 7 years of direct, hands-on experience managing custom software development or enterprise low-code platform implementation projects, with demonstrated responsibility for budget, schedule, and client relationship outcomes. Experience must include projects that went through a full requirements, design, build, and feedback loop - not just deployment or configuration of packaged off-the-shelf software.

Hands-on experience building or configuring solutions on one or more highly configurable low-code enterprise platforms. Qualifying platforms include, but are not limited to: Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate), Appian, Pega, OutSystems, Mendix, or comparable enterprise platforms. Familiarity with the discipline of translating business requirements into platform-native constructs, without custom code - is essential.

Prior experience delivering projects in regulated government environments (state or federal) is strongly preferred. Candidates with direct domain experience in professional licensing, occupational permitting, enforcement, inspections, investigations, or compliance management - whether in a technology delivery or agency operations capacity - will be given significant preference.

Hands-on software development experience at some point in their career is strongly preferred. This does not mean the candidate must be an active developer today - but they ideally have written code, built applications, or engineered software solutions in a professional context. This background is essential for credibility with technical teams, for understanding the real cost and complexity of implementation decisions, and for recognizing when a proposed solution is being over-engineered or under-specified.

Experience managing mixed teams of internal employees and external contractors (system integrators and independent contractors).

Experience managing projects with budgets exceeding $1M and durations of 12+ months.

Technical Proficiency

Demonstrable understanding of cloud platform architecture, preferably Microsoft Azure or Azure Government.

Verifiable experience running both pure agile and waterfall/agile blended projects, with a firm command of agile ceremonies (sprint planning, standups, retrospectives, backlog grooming) and the ability to meet government clients where they are - and progressively bring them toward iterative delivery practices. Candidates must be able to articulate agile principles clearly and credibly to non-technical agency stakeholders.

Ability to read and critically evaluate technical documentation, data models, integration designs, and workflow specifications.

Proficiency with Microsoft Project and/or Unanet for schedule management; familiarity with financial forecasting tools is strongly preferred.

Proficiency with Jira is required, including a working understanding of Jira workflows, board configuration, and automation rules. Candidates must be able to use Jira not just as a task tracker but as a delivery management tool—structuring backlogs, managing sprint state, and configuring automations that reduce manual overhead for the project team.

Sufficient technical fluency to recognize when a proposed configuration or development approach raises delivery risks - and to ask the right questions of the technical team rather than accepting every recommendation at face value.

Certifications

PMP or PRINCE2 certification is desirable but not required. Demonstrated project management competency through verifiable experience and outcomes will be weighted heavily.

Scrum Master or SAFe certification preferred.

Azure or related cloud and/or low-code platform certification is a meaningful differentiator.

Compet