Consultant – Technical Project Manager, MicroMentor – Remote – Remote

Background:

Mercy Corps is a global team of humanitarians working together in more than 40 countries around the world to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression by helping people build secure, productive, and just communities.

MicroMentor is a growing initiative within Mercy Corps and functions much like a technology start-up. Through a proprietary online mentoring platform, MicroMentor provides a technology solution that connects small business owners and entrepreneurs with skilled volunteer business mentors on a global scale. We are the world’s largest network of free business mentoring. Entrepreneurs matched with a mentor have shown significant results in terms of improved job creation, business survival, and revenue growth. Since inception, our community has grown to more than 300,000 entrepreneurs and 90,000 mentors across 180 countries. Our team is diverse, driven, hardworking and highly committed to the mission of helping small businesses thrive through mentoring.

Purpose / Project Description:

MicroMentor is undergoing a significant evolution with a migration from version 2.0 to 3.0, marking a key phase in our growth and sustainability journey. In this context, we are seeking a skilled Technical Project Manager Consultant (TPM) to guide product improvements and high-value partnerships. The TPM will play a central role in decision-making across product engineering, programs, and partnerships, ensuring seamless project execution within specified timelines.

This transition demands a TPM experienced in managing growth-stage startups, capable of overseeing multiple areas simultaneously and leading the development of highly technical projects. The TPM’s expertise in service architecture will be crucial in translating evolving product visions into actionable user stories and specifications, steering the implementation by the software development team, and ensuring milestones are met.

Collaborating closely with senior engineers, the TPM will contribute to scoping new projects, refining deliverables, and supporting the Sales team in estimating and quoting to strategic partners.

Consultant Objectives:

The Technical Project Manager Consultant (TPM) is the decisive leader guiding cross-functional teams through key projects. Serving as the linchpin between product engineering, programs, and partnerships, the TPM aligns teams, makes informed decisions, and ensures project deliverables meet high standards and timelines. Focused on representing MicroMentor’s product and technology strategy, the TPM cultivates relationships with strategic partners. Leveraging a robust technical background, the TPM leads the development of complex projects, translates product visions, and fosters cross-functional collaboration. Committed to excellence, the TPM contributes significantly to MicroMentor’s growth and sustainability, especially during this critical migration from version 2.0 to 3.0.

Consultant Deliverables/Activities:

Deliverable 1: Technical Project Planning and Effort Estimation for Road Map:

• Document outlining the technical roadmap collaboratively developed with stakeholders, providing insights into how technical requirements are translated into actionable items on the roadmap, outlining the impact of resource availability, technology constraints, and potential technical challenges.
• Collaboration report with senior engineers on resource assessments, effort estimation and resource planning.
• Collaborate with QA to define a testing strategy that aligns with project goals and timelines, ensure there is a process for identifying, tracking, and managing defects throughout the development lifecycle and that test cases align with user stories and technical specifications.
• Support with the creations of user stories and specifications translating product visions and feature requests.

Deliverable 2: Migration management support:

• Detailed documentation outlining the plan for transitioning from version 2.0 to 3.0, including key milestones, timelines, and resource requirements.
• Report assessing the technical impact of the migration on existing systems, infrastructure, and databases, providing insights for proactive issue resolution.
• Comprehensive analysis of potential risks associated with the transition, along with a mitigation strategy to address and minimize these risks.
• Document specifying the compatibility between the existing version 2.0 and the new version 3.0, highlighting any potential conflicts or dependencies.
• Detailed plan for migrating data from the old version to the new version, ensuring data integrity, accuracy, and minimal downtime.

Deliverable 3: Strategic Partnership Support:

• Collaborate with senior engineers on scoping new projects and refining deliverables in support of version 3.0 migration.
• Input provided for accurate estimates and quotes for strategic partners.
• Documentation supporting successful collaboration and project outcomes with internal cross departmental teams and strategic partners.
• Documentation of protocols for testing of the new version, including unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing, to ensure a seamless transition with minimal disruptions.
• Comprehensive documentation explaining the technical transition process in layman’s terms for non-technical stakeholders, ensuring transparency and understanding.

Deliverable 4: Progress Tracking and Velocity Management:

• Progress and velocity monitoring report.
• Documentation highlighting successful project delivery and guidance provided to the project team.

Timeframe / Schedule:

Estimated to be approximately 25/hours per week for 6-month duration, working remotely.

The Consultant will report to:

Executive Director, MicroMentor

The Consultant will work closely with:

The Principle Engineer, the core engineering team, the Product Manager, and the Director of Technology & Growth.

Required Experience & Skills:

• 5-10 years of experience in a technically relevant field.
• Minimum of a 4-year degree in computer science, information systems.
• 4+ years of experience in the areas of development, implementation, or user interface engineering, ideally including full stack development experience and some hybrid mobile application development (Ionic, Flutter, etc).
• 3+ years of technical project management experience, preferably in a software or mixed software/hardware environment in an agile or similar production environment.
• Professional Technical Project Management Certification from accredited institution preferred
• Managerial experience applying analytical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Strong sense of personal accountability regarding decision-making
• Experience with providing service to online communities or online consumer services
• Experience working in a high-level collaborative environment and promoting a teamwork mentality
• Ability to predict challenges and seek to proactively head-off obstacles
• Clear communication (written and verbal English) to ensure ability to scope, manage, and lead projects.
• Ability to manage multiple projects at once and identify opportunities for improvement in the software development process.
• Excellent project management skills: planning, scheduling, project communication, issue resolution, change management, and risk management.
• Creative solving of technical problems to ensure the ability to translate business requirements into project plans.
• Well versed in iterative software project management practices like Agile, and the software development life cycle.

To Apply:

In addition to your CV, please submit a brief cover letter which includes a list of relevant projects/experience, expected fees/daily rate, and availability.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our stakeholders and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC’s policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.