Project Manager - Digital/IT

Company Description

MAQ Software is a digital marketing and technology company that helps customers reach markets effectively on time and on budget.

As a Microsoft Preferred Vendor and a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, MAQ Software is closely aligned with Microsoft Corporation for over eleven years.

Founded in 2000, the company employs close to 300 people in three engineering centers in Redmond and India (Hyderabad and Mumbai). We offer cost effective Web, Intranet, Digital Marketing and Analytics solutions. Our solutions use advanced features of SharePoint 2010, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and Business Intelligence, ASP.NET, Silverlight, Windows Azure and Windows Phone 7.

Our long term engagement with Microsoft Corporation shows our capability to deliver:

- high quality solutions on time
- innovative solutions

Company Culture:

We foster entrepreneurial culture with a can do attitude. All of our key managers share IIT or IIM type of excellence in our backgrounds with significant experience in developing and growing the company for many years. The company managers enjoy working with the latest technology and computing trends ahead of the larger industry players.

Starting with the top managers, we are actively involved in the building the business on daily basis. Our managers wear multiple hats from conducting recruitment drives at engineering campuses, training fresh graduates and working with customers to understand their requirements. We follow lean and agile software development techniques to deliver software solutions in half the time as compared to larger players. We focus on excellence in everything we do and details matter to us. We offer above average compensation in return for above average commitment to quality work and dedication to our customers.

Job Description:

We are looking for experienced and highly motivated Project Manager(s), with broad experience in web based application development and testing based on Microsoft and web platforms. Our customers include sales and marketing professionals that are launching marketing programs using Internet to reach consumers and businesses worldwide.

This position requires taking on a technical leadership role for a great team to develop and deliver web applications. For technology oriented companies, typical leadership emerges from technical ranks only and not from business backgrounds such finance or marketing (e.g. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and many others). We have found that people with strong technical backgrounds with business knowledge are successful with us (not the other way round).

For MBA graduates with experience in software industry, the position will start with leading a team of talented software engineers to deliver software solutions utilizing cloud computing and latest mobile and web technologies. With your business background and knowledge of global software industry, we expect you to help us scale from 300 people worldwide to 1000 people in the next few years. We expect you to manage a customer unit of 30 to 50 highly talented engineers within two years of joining us.

The management development program may require you to travel and work from Redmond, Washington location as part of the program.

Your role includes all technical and managerial challenges associated with ensuring project delivery on multiple fast paced projects.

Your key result areas as percentage of your overall work items will be:
Managing a development team of 15 to 25 software engineers (~30%)

- Ensuring effective utilization of resources across multiple projects

- Project planning and tracking

- Handling all Program Management tasks as required

- People management including bi-annual performance reviews, coaching and performance management

- Collaborating with Seattle and other India teams by visiting them at least once a quarter for one to two weeks, daily phone conference calls

Owning delivery of multiple releases for product groups (~30%)

- Helping define and deliver the requirements and feature sets

- Supporting multiple release schedules across a range of projects typically 12 releases in a year (i.e. release cycle is not once a year release)

Architecture development and technical problem solving (~20%)

- Defining and developing architecture and technical designs for projects

- Conducting design and code reviews on weekly basis

Recruitment, process development and training (~15%):

- Innovating and improving company process model

- Training and mentoring the high performance team including driving training for about 10 experienced hires and 40 junior developers through a year

- Building the team by conducting 10 interviews per week and through industry network

Pre-sales and customer Interaction (~5%)

- Technical pre-sales support to help customers realize our strong technical ability

- Reviewing RFPs and provide project plan, effort estimates for six to twelve projects every year

This is a unique opportunity involving technical management responsibility with a growing organization as part of core management team reporting to the top management. This is a new position to help us accommodate growth in people and projects.

Desired Skills & Experience

Candidate Profile:

- Bachelors and/or Master’s degree in Computer Science/ Information Technology from a leading university

- MBA from one of the following business schools: IIMs, ISB, MDI, IMT, FMS, NITIE, XLRI, S.P. Jain

- Must have team management experience

- Strong technical background in Microsoft platform with the ability to develop specifications and work with project team

- Strong project management skills and ability to handle two to five projects at a timePrior work experience working with Microsoft as a customer is a plus

Experience: 2 - 6 years or more

Location: HiTec City 2, Madhapur, Hyderabad

A Typical Day:

The day starts with a daily meeting at 8:45am with global management team which includes Managing Consultant (CEO) of the company and six key managers. We review progress from previous day and move to focus items for the day. To get ready, our typical day will start with a quick review of e-mail sent by US customer teams to understand any pending issues.

Once we resolve any blocking issues, you move to join your project team and get ready for agile “Stand up meeting” which includes developers and project manager(s) from US and India. With clear action items for the day, the project team implements changing customer requirements. There may be a key developer absent for the day so you have to work with the lead to ensure that work items are assigned to someone else. The teams are self-managing and are able to do work item allocation themselves.

Next, human resources asks you to screen technical resumes for scheduling interviews and conduct quick first round interviews for cultural fit and technical awareness of industry hires.

There is a best practices session that is taking place in 11am which will discuss security development life cycle and its relevance to our projects. About 30 developers and test engineers are attending
the session. You decide not to attend the session and instead focus on reviewing the latest software build that has been hosted by the team for functionality and user experience. You review application and review open bugs. You further log bugs and close some bugs logged by you earlier.

Today is team lunch day where all team members meet once a week in cafeteria to eat together. You offer to pay for simple lunch from your morale budget as a simple thank you gesture for hard work done by the team.

In the afternoon, next build is ready. You ensure that quality process team has the necessary information and documents. Wiki pages have been updated with the latest configuration information.

One of the developers is running into a road block and is not able to apply correct logic. You review the algorithm with the developer and associated unit test cases. Upon your review, you are able to suggest a different algorithm and resources on MSDN network.

Your monthly 20 minute 1:1 meeting is not scheduled with 3 of your team members till tomorrow. However, you complete one of the meetings today since you have a longer review with your manager tomorrow.

There is a weekly meeting with human resources on reviewing resource requirements and pending interviews. After the meeting, you return to you team to review the daily builds and the status e-mail for customer readiness.

Pre-sales team is finishing up an RFP response and needs your input to verify effort estimate given to them by the developer on your team. You quickly review the RFP and underlying Windows Azure platform requirement and decide that the estimate is high. You consult the developer on her estimate and decide to reduce it by 17% based on the new component just released by Microsoft which will simplify work. You tell the pre-sales team to include the component in the RFP response.

Your day ends around 7:30pm with two additional interview candidates and progress review with the team(s).

If this profile interests you, please send your applications to applypm@maqsoftware.com