Project Engagement Lead
Tandem
Time zones: EST (UTC -5), CST (UTC -6), MST (UTC -7), PST (UTC -8)
The Tandem team is growing! We are hiring a Project Engagement Lead to join our team and support a long-term key account with the US Department of Defense. The Engagement Lead will provide oversight and coordination across all aspects of the account including close collaboration with government stakeholders, Tandem and subcontractor team leads, and the prime vendor for the contract. The ideal candidate will have experience providing leadership in enterprise environments and high-impact software systems.
Who we are
Tandem is a technology firm specializing in product definition, custom software, user experience design, and software managed services. We create custom software that inspires people and drives business forward. As a group of thinkers and makers from many disciplines, we are brought together by a shared goal: bring talented strategists, designers, and engineers together to solve meaningful and ambitious business problems. We always focus first on people — our clients, their customers, and our team.
What it’s like to work with us
As a consultancy, we have the opportunity to solve a lot of different problems. We work directly with our clients in small teams, building and providing guidance on products, and collaborating with designers. Our unique approach to consulting leads to a better employee experience and a higher quality of work life.
As project leaders, we love supporting our teams and clients to successfully deliver high-quality software, on time and on budget. In support of our teams it is our responsibility to ensure that we can uphold Tandem’s values and our best-practices within a client’s environment - when we do so, we succeed. We also work to find opportunities for our team to learn and grow within their client work.
Our vision is to create a supportive, collaborative environment and empower people to deliver work they’re proud of. At Tandem, everyone teaches and everyone learns. Egos are low, and we're all genuinely interested in seeing everyone around us succeed - team members and client stakeholders alike.
The Project Engagement Lead role
The Project Engagement Lead for this position will direct the execution of Tandem’s contract with the United States Military Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM); a large part of which will be related to the MIRS system (MEPCOM Integrated Resource System).
MEPCOM is responsible for processing new applicants for all six military service branches which includes background checks, medical testing, aptitude screening, benefits enrollment, bootcamp logistics, etc. There are multiple systems and modules that support these activities. And, the systems are responsible for high-availability as they process hundreds of thousands of applicants each year in 65 sites across the country.
Tandem has been working with MEPCOM for 4+ years and the engagement has been extended through a new prime vendor for a further 5-7 years. Broadly this role will support the following aspects of the project:
- Working closely with the client stakeholders and Tandem’s design and engineering team leads to curate and maintain the product roadmap for the application and related systems
- Managing and communicating current status and plans for the software, including requirements gathering, user research/testing, UX design, and software engineering
- Empowering the delivery team to participate in product definition, prioritization, and overall work roadmap development; helping break down larger initiatives into more manageable segments
- Championing an iterative, agile approach to the product
- Facilitating the onboarding of new project team members, including tracking the progress of background checks, access to client systems, and required technical certifications
- Working with the team to organize agile ceremony meetings such as backlog grooming, estimation, sprint planning, and retrospectives
- Tracking intra-team concerns around collaboration and knowledge transfer including peer teams such as production support, data migration, and legacy software
- Advocating for the product and the implementation; moving the systems forward for users while also considering technical debt management, cybersecurity, data integrity, and other nonfunctional requirements
The ideal candidate
The ideal candidate will have the following experiences and qualifications:
- Comfortable working with large enterprise environments with many stakeholders (both internal and external)
- Also comfortable working as part of a smaller company with a strong modern, agile, collaborative, diverse, and creative culture
- Long-term exposure to technology and the process of agile software development, including how UX and design can be successfully integrated - but does not need to have a background as a developer or designer
- Has excellent communication skills both written and verbal and can adapt to different communication styles of the team as needed
- Is adept at facilitating meetings in a way that all voices are heard but the objective of the meeting is achieved
- Is highly organized, on time, and meets the deadlines they set for themselves and the commitments they’ve made to others on the team
How we work and our benefits
We care deeply about our team and strive to provide flexibility and benefits so each person can prioritize the things they care about.
For example, our core working hours are from 10am-4pm in your local time zone. The goal of core hours is to ensure that we can pair and collaborate in a high-bandwidth way during the majority of our workday while allowing us the flexibility that real life requires. You may notice that 10am-4pm for five days doesn't add up to 40 hours - yet 40 is generally what we expect to do. How you organize your work time outside of core hours is at your discretion, whether this is early mornings, late evenings, or weekends (though weekend work is not recommended).
Our other benefits include
- Healthy work/life balance with no overtime requests
- Competitive annual salary
- 100% employer paid medical, dental, and vision plans for employee, spouse, and family
- 100% employer paid life insurance policy
- 100% employer paid short-term and long-term disability insurance
- 3 weeks of paid time off to start, increasing by 1 week each year up to 5 weeks off
- 3 paid conference days each year
- Annual learning budget for conferences, courses, online training, books, etc.
- Eligibility to enroll in the Tandem retirement plan with 3% employer matching after 6 months of employment
For a full list of all benefits and employment policies, please check out our Company Handbook.
Our hiring process
We use a 4 step process:
- Resume and application review
- Executive phone screen - meet with 1 or 2 of our company executives
- Reference checks
- Leadership team interviews - meet with 4-6 of our leadership team members
The first step in our process is to fill out our application form. Along with providing your resume you will be asked a few questions on that form. We value thoughtful responses and will disregard applications without them.
If we decide to move forward, we’ll follow up with you to schedule an initial phone screen with one or more of our executive team members. Our phone screens are meant to learn more about you, your communication style, and answer questions you may have about Tandem and the role.
If that goes well, we’ll ask you to provide 3+ references, ideally at least one would be a former manager and one a former peer. We will follow up with these references via phone or email.
The last step will be to schedule interviews with several of our leadership team members across disciplines (UX/design, software engineering, client/product management, etc). These interviews will allow us to ask questions about your experiences from multiple perspectives.
Once complete, our decision process will typically only take a few days.
Who you'll be working with
Tandem's team members come from diverse and nontraditional backgrounds. We support one another in our careers, and are working to achieve inclusivity across the technology industry. Learn more about our culture on the Tandem blog:
- We've embraced salary band transparency and ensure our accountability through regular independently conducted pay equity audits
- We pair program every day and prioritize empathy in our pairing practices
- We build each other up and combat imposter syndrome, stereotype threat, and the confidence gap
We don’t want to miss great candidates. Don’t let doubt deter you from joining our team.
PLEASE NOTE: applications which do not include thoughtful responses to our application questions will be disregarded.
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