About this role
Job Description
The DevOps Technical Project Manager serves as the program lead for the Pipeline team at Magnopus, which builds and supports the tools, automation, and workflows used on both our linear film and interactive projects. Working within agile development teams, this person plans, prioritizes, and tracks work, keeps the Pipeline roadmap aligned with the needs of every project in the studio, and clears the obstacles that slow down artists, engineers, and producers.
This role sits at the intersection of production and technology. It requires enough technical depth to understand how tools, builds, and pipelines fit together and to hold credible conversations with pipeline developers and engineers, along with a working understanding of how linear film pipelines move work from asset creation through final delivery. The position involves frequent interaction with Production, Engineering, creative leads, and studio leadership, and occasionally with vendors and partners. The individual must be able to promote collaborative decision-making, provide direction and a sense of urgency to the team, objectively evaluate risks, and make sound decisions with minimal guidance in a fast-moving studio environment with a certain degree of ambiguity.
Responsibilities
- Project manage the Pipeline team using agile practices, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives, supporting all projects in the studio.
- Partner with Production, Engineering, and creative leads to gather pipeline needs for every project, translate them into a prioritized backlog, and balance competing demands between linear film and interactive projects.
- Track the dependencies between pipeline tools, workflows, and project milestones for both film and interactive work, and communicate the impact of changes, releases, and delays to the teams affected.
- Own the planning toolchain: manage Jira projects, boards, workflows, and dashboards; maintain roadmaps, documentation, and decision logs in Confluence; and use Slack to keep teams and stakeholders informed.
- Work with the team's tooling and source control (GitHub and Perforce) closely enough to understand release and integration status and to plan around them.
- Create, develop, and manage schedules, roadmaps, and resource plans, and deliver within the time, budget, and resource constraints agreed with stakeholders.
- Identify and manage risks, dependencies, and blockers across projects; create contingency plans and decide on and execute them when required.
- Plan and track budgets for tools, licenses, and vendor services, always looking for ways to use resources efficiently and reduce cost.
- Report program status to multi-tiered audiences including the team, peers, department heads, and executive staff.
- Act as the bridge between technical and non-technical stakeholders, explaining technical constraints and tradeoffs in clear terms.
- Drive continuous improvement of team process and workflow, using data such as sprint velocity and turnaround times to identify where the studio can work better.
Requirements
- 3-5 years of project or program management experience required, including a minimum of two years managing agile software, DevOps, or pipeline teams.
- Demonstrated technical experience, such as a background in software or tools development, pipeline, build engineering, or DevOps, sufficient to understand architecture, workflows, and technical tradeoffs.
- Understanding of production pipelines for linear film work (for example VFX or animation, asset management, review and approval, and delivery). Familiarity with interactive or real-time pipelines is a plus.
- Working proficiency with Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and Perforce.
- Experience running agile teams (Scrum, Kanban, or a hybrid), including planning, backlog management, and retrospectives.
- Program management experience should include:
- Ability to multi-task and manage multiple concurrent projects, usually at different stages of the life cycle
- Ability to lead and manage multi-disciplinary teams in a matrix management environment
- Understanding of requirements from internal customers and the ability to communicate them to multi-tiered audiences
- Ability to negotiate scope, schedule, and resource tradeoffs
- Ability to develop program plans with concentration on meeting performance, budget, and schedule goals
- Ability to resolve conflicts in a productive manner
- Excellent communication skills (both written and oral)
- Proven ability to build collaboration among team members
- Familiarity with CI/CD and build automation concepts, and an agile or project management certification (such as PMP or CSM), are a plus.
Starting compensation will be determined based on relevant skills, experience and market considerations.