Project Manager

Mactores is the agent-native AWS modernization firm. Most modernization work doesn't ship, it stalls in pilots, slips a year, or lands at three times the budget. We exist to ship it: production systems running, legacy retired, outcomes measured. Our delivery is built on Aedeon, the agent platform built by Mactores' founders' sister company, which absorbs the repetitive 60–70% of engagement work, discovery, dependency mapping, validation, test generation, that traditional consulting bills human hours against. Forward-deployed engineers own the rest: architecture, judgment, and cutover, on dates we commit to in the contract.

What you will do?

• Build the project plan in Smartsheet from the Solutions Architect's scope of work, real dependencies, a defensible critical path, sprint boundaries overlaid on the timeline.
• Track scope, hours, and budget in real time. Flag burn-rate risk early and push back on scope creep with numbers, not gut feel.
• Maintain a live risk register. Spot risks before they become issues, surface the right ones to the client at the right time, and drive mitigation actively.
• Maintain a live RAID log (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) and an action tracker with clear ownership, accountability, and timely closure.
• Run crisp daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives that produce decisions, not discussions.
• Remove sprint blockers personally. Chase the client-side data dependency, escalate the stuck cloud permission, redirect pulled resources don't let "waiting on" sit in a log for days.
• Handle sprint-level risks in real time: reprioritize, descope, swap stories, or escalate before commitments slip.
• Keep trackers honest. Action items have owners and dates; delays are visible and followed up on time.
• Translate technical progress into business language for the customer, and business priorities into clear, estimable requirements for engineers.
• Facilitate internal and external architecture reviews across India and three US time zones; document decisions and circulate them the same day.
• Produce weekly customer status updates a senior business leader can absorb in 90 seconds — RAG colors backed by evidence, not sentiment.
• Own customer escalations and drive them to resolution. Communicate status, risks, and decisions needed — proactively, not reactively.
• Onboard engineers on customer systems, scope, process, deliverables, and documentation standards.
• Create kick-off presentations, project charters, and tracking mechanisms in collaboration with the customer.
• Maintain meeting notes, recorded calls, and a clean project documentation library.
• Review and approve timesheets and leaves; keep capacity planning and team calendar management accurate.
• Negotiate scope changes with data. Produce formal change requests with impact analysis hours, timeline, trade-offs, options before anyone commits the team to additional work.
• Drive sprint predictability with velocity planning and burndown tracking; commitments are realistic and consistently met.
• Run backlog refinement with Principal Consultants or Technical Leads so stories are clear, prioritized, and estimable.

What are we looking for

• 3+ years of delivery experience on cloud engineering or data engineering projects.
• Hands-on fluency with Smartsheet, Jira / Confluence, and Clockify — you can stand up the tooling on day one.
• Excellent written and spoken communication, facilitation, negotiation, and coaching skills — you can hold your ground with a skeptical client engineering director and coach a junior engineer in the same afternoon.
• Strong prioritization and problem-solving instincts. You make trade-offs explicit rather than quietly absorbing them.
• A demonstrable track record of driving outcomes, not just reporting on them.
• Demonstrated experience managing at least one fixed-bid project from kickoff through closure, including scope change negotiation with clients.
• A strong grasp of Agile delivery metrics — velocity, burndown, sprint predictability — and the ability to use them to drive execution.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-changing environments where requirements evolve; you bring structure proactively.

You will be preferred if you posses

• Experience managing Data Lake projects on AWS.
• Professional Scrum Master™ (PSM) certification.
• Managing Jira Projects certification.
• Smartsheet certification.

How we work?

• Aedeon absorbs scale. Engineers absorb judgment. The contract absorbs risk fixed-date delivery, with Mactores covering overage cost for delays inside our control. You're the person who keeps those three honest on a live engagement: the plan defensible, the burn visible, the risks surfaced before they cost anything. Our engineers embed with the customer's team and carry the delivery commitment personally. You carry the date.