Technical Project Manager

About the role

You will join a small senior crew embedded inside a client organisation, usually a bank, telco, health system or energy operator. You will work in their repository, on their CI, in their on-call rotation. The systems are consequential and the constraints are real: regulatory scrutiny, legacy integration, and a business that cannot tolerate a bad release.

This is a hands-on delivery role for someone technical enough to challenge an estimate and read a dependency graph. You will be accountable for the plan being true, not for the plan looking good.

The team you join

You will coordinate across the client's teams, our crew, and usually two or three vendors with competing incentives.

What you will do

• Own delivery of a workstream end to end, including the parts that are inconvenient.
• Build plans engineers believe, and keep them honest as reality intervenes.
• Manage dependencies across client teams, vendors and third parties.
• Surface risk early and specifically, with an option attached.
• Run the ceremonies that help and drop the ones that do not.

Minimum qualifications

• Six or more years delivering software projects, several of them technically complex.
• Enough technical depth to interrogate an estimate or a design.
• Experience managing dependencies you do not control.
• Clear, direct communication with executives and engineers alike.
• Comfort saying a date is not achievable, early.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in a regulated environment with audit obligations.
• Background in engineering or another technical discipline.
• Vendor and contract management experience.

Your first three months

1. Build a dependency map that reflects reality, including the inconvenient parts.
2. Get a plan agreed that the engineers doing the work actually believe.
3. Establish a risk conversation that surfaces problems while they are still cheap.
4. By month three, be forecasting accurately enough that the sponsor stops asking.

Compensation and benefits

Rates are agreed per engagement and depend on scope and seniority. We discuss numbers openly on the first call, before you spend time on a practical.

• Rates are agreed per engagement and discussed openly on the first call, before you spend time on a practical.
• Remote across Africa, with on-site weeks where the engagement calls for them.
• Work embedded inside regulated institutions, on systems with real consequences, alongside senior engineers who review your work and expect you to review theirs.
• Small crews and direct access to partners, with no layers between you and the decisions.
• Long relationships. We would rather work with the same capable people across engagements than hire for a single project.
• Straight answers. We tell you what we can and cannot offer before you commit, and we do not promise what we cannot deliver.

How we interview

The whole process is normally two to three weeks, and we work around your current job.

1. Application review. A partner reads every application. You hear back either way, usually within two working days.
2. Intro call, 45 minutes. Your background, what you want next, and honest answers about the work, the rate and the constraints.
3. Practical session, 4 to 6 hours. A realistic problem close to what the role actually involves, scheduled around you and sized to respect your time.
4. Practical review, 60 minutes. We walk through what you built, why, and what you would change with more time.
5. Partner conversation, 45 minutes. Scope, expectations, terms, and your questions.
6. Decision, normally within two working days of the last conversation.

How to apply

Send an application through the form. A partner reads every one, and you will hear back either way. If you are unsure whether you qualify, apply anyway and say what you are unsure about.

We will tell you what we can and cannot offer before you commit to anything.

Apply for this role →