4502 Program Manager

OVERVIEW:

We are seeking three high-performing Program Managers to support a defense client at Fort Hood in a dynamic, fast-paced innovation environment supporting military vehicle acquisition, modernization, and enabling digital capabilities. This single posting will be used to hire one Program Manager in each of the following specialties:

1. Software Acquisition

2. Automation & Operations

3. Acquisition & Contracting Vehicle Execution

Each selected Program Manager will own one primary specialty. Candidates are not

expected to demonstrate deep expertise in all three areas and should identify the specialty that best matches their experience.

Across the team, the Program Managers will translate mission needs into executable plans, manage efforts from problem definition through award, pilot, fielding, transition, or sustained operations, and coordinate multidisciplinary teams that may include operators, systems developers, software vendors, cybersecurity stakeholders, data owners, contracting professionals, legal and fiscal advisors, industry, academia, and senior Army acquisition leaders.

The work blends program management, agile delivery, stakeholder facilitation, technical fluency, and operational ownership. One day you might be aligning a software licensing and fielding strategy; the next, stabilizing an automation workflow, developing an acquisition package, or facilitating a decision with operators, developers, and contracting professionals.

Success is measured by reliable operations, executable awards, fielded outcomes, and capabilities that transition to sustained use.

GENERAL DUTIES:

Core Responsibilities Across All Specialties

Client & Mission Success

• Serve as a trusted partner to DoW stakeholders operating across operational, program, and acquisition ecosystems.
• Translate operational problems into clear user outcomes, requirements, scope, acquisition constraints, deliverables, and measurable acceptance criteria.
• Facilitate collaboration across operators, product and technical teams, Systems Developers, software vendors, cybersecurity, data owners, contracting, legal, fiscal, and senior acquisition stakeholders.
• Help structure pilots, prototypes, experiments, and operational assessments so they generate evidence for adoption, scaling, transition, and sustainment decisions.
• Lead workshops, process reviews, assessments, and decision packages that make options, tradeoffs, timelines, risks, and required government actions clear to technical and nontechnical leaders.
• Continuously collect user feedback and refine execution, adoption, fielding, and transition approaches based on mission outcomes.

Program and Project Delivery

• Own day-to-day delivery for assigned workstreams from need identification through the appropriate end state, including acquisition, pilot, deployment, award, transition, or sustained operations.
• Build integrated plans, schedules, and backlogs with clear owners, dependencies, milestones, decision points, acceptance criteria, and fallback routes.
• Apply agile and Scrum methods to plan, execute, and adapt work in small increments while protecting ongoing mission operations.
• Define and track performance measures such as milestone achievement, cycle time, reliability, adoption, data quality, user outcomes, and time saved.
• Coordinate closely with leadership and Field Experts to bring the right expertise into projects at the right time.
• Identify risks and blockers early, drive coordinated mitigation, and communicate status, tradeoffs, decisions, and support requests clearly to internal and external stakeholders.
• Maintain high-quality requirements, plans, trackers, decision logs, user guidance, transition materials, and lessons-learned documentation.

Technical & Systems Support (Program-Level)

• Partner with Systems Developers, platform and tool teams, vendors, and technical and operational subject matter experts while remaining accountable for program-level outcomes.
• Understand software, automation, integration, testing, deployment, and sustainment considerations well enough to translate between operational users, acquisition stakeholders, and technical contributors.
• Pull cybersecurity, RMF/ATO, identity and access, data handling, IP/data rights, interoperability, hosting, integration, and security constraints forward so they do not become late-stage blockers.
• Support configuration, testing, deployment, documentation, and sustainment planning appropriate to the assigned specialty and workstream.

Operational & Contract Management

• Understand and manage contract requirements while driving measurable delivery and mission outcomes for the client.
• Maintain operating cadence, issue tracking, backlog or package hygiene, funding and milestone visibility, and follow-through across multiple simultaneous efforts.
• Identify recurring manual work, unnecessary approvals, administrative delays, policy barriers, and coordination bottlenecks and drive practical fixes.
• Build repeatable playbooks, templates, checklists, workflows, and transition practices that increase speed, transparency, compliance, and resilience to personnel turnover.
• Operate with minimal oversight, elevate issues with a clear decision or support request, and keep work moving from identification to closure.

Role-Specific Responsibilities

Program Manager - Software Acquisition

• Manage software-enabled efforts from problem definition through acquisition, pilot, contract action, deployment, user feedback, and transition to sustained use.
• Translate mission outcomes into product backlogs, release goals, acceptance criteria, and measurable adoption and performance metrics; align iterative delivery with acquisition and fielding actions.
• Develop acquisition and licensing strategies for commercial software, SaaS/PaaS, and software-enabled services.
• Evaluate license structures, renewal models, consumption assumptions, enterprise scaling, total lifecycle cost, data and IP rights, portability, and vendor lock-in risk before commitments are made.
• Navigate software buying channels and pathways such as GSA Multiple Award Schedule IT (formerly Schedule 70), Army Digital Market (formerly CHESS), enterprise license agreements, BPAs, IDIQs, and the DoD Software Acquisition Pathway.
• Coordinate cybersecurity, RMF/ATO, hosting, integration, release management, and transition dependencies to support rapid software fielding and prototype transition.

Program Manager - Automation & Operations

• Own the health and evolution of the team's existing workflow automation ecosystem; inherit what is built, stabilize what is working, improve what is not, and keep the operating environment reliable.
• Map how capability intake, vetting, validation, experimentation, decisions, and transition work before changing the tooling.
• Maintain a prioritized automation backlog that balances operational reliability, defect resolution, user requests, technical debt, and new opportunities.
• Implement maintainable automation across intake, routing, status tracking, approvals, notifications, reporting, dashboards, and decision support without creating one-off processes or unmanaged complexity.
• Troubleshoot failed automations and integration issues by isolating process, data, permission, configuration, API, webhook, and technical causes and coordinating fixes with tool owners and administrators.
• Apply practical configuration management, testing, change control, access control, documentation, runbooks, user training, and adoption support; track automation health, cycle time, data quality, adoption, and time saved.

Program Manager - Acquisition & Contracting Vehicle Execution

• Move validated mission needs from identification through market research, acquisition pathway and contracting vehicle selection, acquisition package development, solicitation or award action, and post-award handoff.
• Choose among OTAs, SBIR/STTR, BPAs, IDIQs, commercial and FAR-based strategies, and other appropriate mechanisms based on requirement maturity, competition, funding, timeline, and transition intent.
• Conduct or coordinate market research, vendor engagement, acquisition strategy, scope development, cost and price inputs, and integrated award schedules.
• Develop or support acquisition artifacts such as statements of work, performance work statements, statements of objectives, independent government cost estimates, evaluation criteria, and required approval packages.
• Coordinate contracting officers, legal counsel, resource managers, technical SMEs, security and cyber stakeholders, and operational leaders while respecting government roles and contracting authority.
• Surface funding timing, fiscal year, competition, data and IP rights, security, legal, and contracting constraints early enough to preserve schedule options and fallback routes.
• Track actions to closure and connect prototype or contract awards to test, fielding, transition, follow-on production, sustainment, or program adoption plans so the award is not the end state.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

Common Key Skills

• 5+ years of acquisition, project/program management, operations, process improvement, contracting, or technical delivery experience in a federal, DoW, or defense-adjacent environment.
• Experience working in innovation-focused organizations, rapid capability offices, labs, acquisition programs, or operational experimentation environments; familiarity with military vehicles, material acquisition, systems engineering, or rapid prototyping efforts is valuable.
• Experience managing client-facing initiatives and multiple concurrent workstreams from planning through execution, adoption, award, fielding, or transition.
• Strong agile project management and continuous-improvement fluency; hands-on Scrum experience is preferred.
• Excellent organizational, written, verbal, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills, including the ability to brief senior military and acquisition leaders.
• Comfort working with military personnel, government civilians, technical experts, vendors, contracting professionals, and senior leaders with the professionalism and discretion required for high-stakes discussions.
• Ability to work independently, diagnose ambiguous and messy problems, make sound tradeoffs, and deliver results in fast-moving environments with minimal oversight.
• A track record of converting complex operational, technical, acquisition, or process issues into clear decisions, owners, actions, and measurable outcomes.

Specialty Qualifications

Software Acquisition

• Demonstrated experience acquiring, fielding, transitioning, or managing software capabilities - not solely developing software.
• Working knowledge of software development lifecycles, agile product delivery, DevSecOps concepts, release management, APIs, data integration, hosting, and user-centered iteration.
• Experience evaluating software license structures and SaaS/PaaS considerations, including renewals, scaling, consumption, lifecycle cost, portability, and vendor lock-in.
• Familiarity with GSA MAS IT/legacy Schedule 70, Army Digital Market/legacy CHESS, enterprise license agreements, BPAs, IDIQs, and software-specific acquisition and fielding pathways.
• Working knowledge of cybersecurity, RMF/ATO, cloud and hosting, data and IP rights, and integration dependencies; rapid software fielding or prototype transition experience is strongly preferred.

Automation & Operations

• Demonstrated experience inheriting, maintaining, and improving an existing workflow automation or low-code ecosystem - not only building prototypes.
• Hands-on fluency with workflow and process automation, APIs and integrations, structured data, dashboards, and basic troubleshooting.
• Experience mapping processes, defining requirements, prioritizing backlogs, testing changes, documenting operating procedures, and supporting user adoption.
• Comfort with tools such as Jira/Confluence, Microsoft 365/Power Platform, Power BI, ServiceNow, or similar workflow and reporting ecosystems; an exact tool match is not required.
• Basic scripting, SQL, API, or data transformation experience is a strong differentiator, as is experience with access, configuration, change control, user training, and enterprise operations.

Acquisition & Contracting Vehicle Execution

• Hands-on experience moving requirements from identification through acquisition package development and award; candidates should be able to name the artifacts and actions they personally owned.
• Working fluency across acquisition authorities, programs, pathways, and contracting vehicles such as OTAs, SBIR/STTR, BPAs, and IDIQs, with the judgment to choose among them based on the requirement.
• Experience with market research, requirements and scope documents, IGCE or cost inputs, acquisition strategies, evaluation criteria, vendor engagement, and award schedules.
• Strong understanding of funding timing, fiscal constraints, competition, data and IP rights, security, and other issues that can affect acquisition strategy and schedule.
• Ability to operate effectively with contracting officers, legal counsel, resource managers, technical SMEs, security and cyber stakeholders, and senior operational leaders.
• Experience in rapid capability, innovation, SBIR, OTA, commercial technology, or prototype environments is strongly preferred.
• PMP, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), DAWIA/acquisition, FAC-C/FAC-COR, contracting, software/cloud, platform, Lean, or process-improvement certifications are useful differentiators, but they do not substitute for hands-on execution.

CLEARANCE:

• Active Top Secret clearance minimum required