Technical Project Manager
Location: Sparx Head Office in Exeter
Term: Full time – Permanent or Contract
Salary: Highly competitive dependent on experience (plus generous benefits and relocation package)
Reporting to: Product Director
About Sparx
Sparx is developing an extraordinary new technology for the classroom that is redefining the limits of what young people can achieve.
Our platform for Maths uses custom built content and a powerful, data-driven mobile framework to deliver a tailored set of exercises, games and incentives to the student.
We’re looking for people with a deep passion for education and a belief in the power of technology to improve it. Things move fast at Sparx so we need people who assume that excellence is a given and who are ambitious, creative and effortlessly knowledgeable. People who want a challenge; people who want to make a difference.
Job description
As a Technical Project Manager you’ll be central to the development of the sophisticated platform and applications currently in development by Sparx. You’ll be responsible for executing end-to-end project management and ensuring everything comes together and is delivered successfully, on time and to the highest level of QA. Project Management at Sparx isn’t about just managing high level strategic plans or formulaic models – it’s about getting stuck into the details, getting your sleeves rolled up and doing what ever is required to move projects along as efficiently as possible. Taking responsibility for the planning but also ensuring that the workstreams are running and dealing with any problems as you go. You’re known for making things happen, driving a fast pace of activity whilst making decisions quickly and wisely.
If you’ve got a strong commercial startup background, and demonstrable experience of project management in an Agile, fast paced, ever changing, dynamic environment, then we want to hear from you. If you’re looking for a challenge where you’ll break new ground every day, in a way that makes a difference to the next generation, we think you’ll fit right in at Sparx.
Key responsibilities
- Agreeing project objectives with the Product Director and Senior Technical Leaders, then proactively establishing priorites and making decisions to optimise delivery.
- Ensure quality control procedures are agreed and adhered to.
- Manage the resourcing levels of the Technology Team e.g. authorisation of leave in alignment with manpower requirements identifying resources requirements, anticipating conflicts in advance, planning and assigning responsibilities to others as required to optimise workstreams
- Accountable for making sure that all the aims and quality standards of the project are met
- Hands on management of all day-to-day operational aspects of projects, delivering on what you are personally accountable for and evaluating iteratively to ensure the continual high performance and efficiency of the team
- Systematic updating of key stakeholders on the status and outcomes of projects
- Risk assessment and management, anticipating and reacting to change
- Adapting to shifting priorities, demands and timelines
- Track and resolve project issues and manage priorities and conflicts
- Work with the wider Sparx team to ensure the product is the best it can be, ensuring continued focus on the bigger picture and while still delivering what needs to happen that day
- Be a good team player – help out if someone asks and recognise when all hands are required on deck
- Engendering a positive and collaborative attitude amongst the team
- Recognise your ambassadorial role in the communication of the values and vision of Sparx
About you
You’re an expert and passionate about what you do. You’re adept at being thrown in at the deep end and working with detail orientated stakeholders. You’re able to engender a sense of willing cooperation from all points of the Sparx circumference using the credibility and trust you’ve built through your ability, results and interpersonal skills.
You’ll use your extraordinary attention to detail, ingenuity and tenacity to relentlessly drive your projects to succeed at the highest level of quality and always look at raising the bar for yourself and others.
Things move quickly here so you’ll be able to work under pressure and be comfortable with a fast-paced technical environment with changing priorities and a fluctuating workload. Multi-tasking, planning and organisation while anticipating and adapting to change are your strengths and you can deliver on short term objectives without forgetting the bigger longer term goal.
You’ll be able to get going of your own accord, a true self-starter who uses your initiative to get stuff done and to jump in to assist whoever needs the extra hands to get the goals achieved. As well as being a great team worker with strong communication skills, you have the ability to focus on what’s best for the product above your own objectives.
We like a good list, so here’s an overview of some of the specific skills and experience we’re looking for:
Essential:
- Proven experience in delivering complex technical projects
- Minimum 2:1 in a scientific or technical discipline
- Minimum of 5 years commercial project management experience in an innovative technical startup environment
- Stakeholder management experience
- Ability to relate to and communicate with both business and technology parts of the business and to bridge any perceived gap between the two
- Experience of working with Agile methodology
- Flexibility in styles of working beyond any rules or established project management frameworks
Our team
At Sparx, we work hard, and we play hard. You’ll be able to see Dartmoor from your office window, and get to the beach in 20 minutes.
Our generous benefits include substantial holiday leave and a company pension once you’ve completed your probationary period. We also have a range of on-site facilities for all employees to use free of charge. There’s a netball court and a five-a-side football pitch just outside, an on-site gym with classes throughout the day, a running track and pool table, a 2012 Olympic table tennis table and a café serving free, delicious and organic food. On top of this, we’re constantly organising events and activities to support our charities, and to socialise.
To find out more, and to see the other roles we are recruiting for, please visit our website at www.sparx.co.uk.