Project Manager

About the role

Join AutoNation’s Technology Project Management team as a Project Manager/Scrum Master and help our teams deliver complete solutions that reshape how America buys, sells, and services vehicles. You’ll enable delivery teams, drive features forward, and champion the Agile practices that keep our technology organization moving fast. As a Project Manager/Scrum Master, you will facilitate Agile ceremonies, coach teams on Agile frameworks and best practices, and apply traditional project management approaches when a project calls for them. You’ll develop project plans, manage risk, scope, and budgets that bring solutions to life, all while clearing the impediments standing between your teams and successful delivery. Your work will drive measurable business impact you can witness first-hand.

Organizational Relationships

This position reports to the Director, Project Management and provides leadership and support for one or more projects and teams. You will partner and interface with technical leaders, business analysts, product owners, stakeholders, vendors, and extended project team members across AutoNation’s Technology and business organizations.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain project governance—cadence, decision forums, and change control—and keep living artifacts current, including the project charter, RACI, RAID/risk log, and decision log.
• Develop project plans that manage resources, schedules, and budgets to meet deliverables and reporting requirements.
• Track and report key project metrics and budget variances, and lead status meetings, translating delivery status into business impact, risks, and the decisions leadership needs to make.
• Manage change requests impacting scope, schedule, and budget through established change control, and communicate impacts to stakeholders.
• Actively manage the execution of the project, including assigning work to project staff, managing project scope and finances, and ensuring the quality of deliverables.
• Ensure planning of go-live and deployment activities and facilitate their execution.
• Keep resource allocations and utilization current and approve team timesheets in the project management tool (Planview PPM Pro).
• Proactively identify, assess, and prioritize project risks; develop mitigation and contingency plans; and maintain a risk/RAID log to track resolution.
• Partner with stakeholders, business analysts, and product owners to understand product and organizational impact, and manage vendor implementations.
• Define and execute the communication plan for team-level activities, managing expectations and providing status updates to customers and management.
• Facilitate and support team ceremonies for one or more development teams, teaching and enforcing the values and principles of Agile while promoting self-organization and the continuous improvement of work standards.
• Assist with resource allocation and effective capacity planning to determine what the team can commit to in any given iteration, and monitor velocity to continuously improve efficiency.
• Learn and actively use project management and ticket-tracking software (such as Planview PPM Pro and Azure DevOps/Jira) to manage the team’s backlog and sprint-committed items.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant project management experience and a BS degree in Computer Science or a related field, or an MS degree and 6+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience with project management and collaboration tools such as Planview PPM Pro, Azure DevOps/Jira, MS Teams/Office, and SharePoint, and diagramming tools such as Lucidchart, Figma, or Miro (Planview PPM Pro preferred, not required).
• Proven ability to manage scope, schedule, budget, and resources across multiple concurrent projects in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving environment.
• Demonstrated experience with proactive risk management and project governance, including maintaining artifacts such as RAID logs and applying change control.
• Excellent people and communication skills, with experience collaborating across all levels of the organization, including executive leadership and senior management.
• Results-oriented team player who maintains a positive, can-do attitude and drives collaboration.
• Demonstrated experience managing technology projects using Agile/Scrum methodologies (Scrum and/or Kanban), with the ability to apply traditional/waterfall project management when a project requires it.
• Strong understanding of Agile and waterfall frameworks as well as project management methodologies, tools, and techniques.
• Scrum (CSM/PSM) and Project Management Professional (PMP) certifications strongly preferred; SAFe and Six Sigma (Green or Black Belt) certifications a plus.
• Must meet company’s requirements for employment.

Physical Requirements

• Ability to travel less than 5% between AutoNation work locations as required by work assignments and delivery schedules
• Work with computers and other common office equipment
• Work locations are in a corporate office environment with no special physical requirements beyond what is normally expected in a typical modern corporate office