Senior Technical Project Manager — Data Architecture & Engineering
Client: Pharma Industry
Location: Houston, TX — Hybrid
Engagement: Initial three-month contract, with potential conversion to a permanent position based on business needs and mutual fit. Conversion is not guaranteed.
Position Summary
We are seeking a Senior Technical Project Manager to lead delivery of enterprise data architecture and engineering initiatives for Empower Pharmacy. This engagement requires a technically fluent project leader who can quickly assume ownership of in-flight work, establish continuity, and maintain momentum across technical and business teams.
Working closely with data architects, engineers, analytics teams, and business stakeholders, you will translate technical requirements and architectural decisions into executable plans. You should be comfortable reviewing data flows, discussing integration dependencies, challenging estimates, and identifying technical risks early.
The ideal candidate combines disciplined project management with practical experience delivering data platforms, integrations, or enterprise analytics solutions. Success requires sound technical judgment, clear communication, and the ability to become effective quickly within an established team.
Key Responsibilities
- Take ownership of active initiatives: Complete knowledge transfer, assess current project health, and establish a clear view of commitments, outstanding decisions, risks, and upcoming milestones.
- Lead delivery: Manage scope, schedules, resources, dependencies, and budget tracking across assigned data architecture and engineering projects.
- Translate architecture into execution: Partner with technical leads to break designs and requirements into sequenced deliverables, accountable owners, realistic estimates, and acceptance criteria.
- Manage technical dependencies: Identify and resolve delivery risks involving source systems, data availability, integration design, environments, data quality, and downstream reporting.
- Drive informed decisions: Facilitate technical discussions, document tradeoffs and decisions, and escalate issues with clear options and recommendations.
- Coordinate testing and releases: Align engineering, business, and quality teams on data reconciliation, integration testing, user acceptance, release readiness, and production handoff.
- Maintain delivery discipline: Keep project plans, backlogs, risk and issue logs, and status reporting current. Use Agile or hybrid practices appropriate to the work.
- Partner across functions: Coordinate internal teams and external vendors, communicating progress, constraints, and decisions clearly to both technical and executive audiences.
- Support governance requirements: Work with Security, Quality, and Compliance partners to incorporate applicable controls, documentation, and approvals into delivery plans.
Required Qualifications
- Seven or more years of technical project or program management experience, including at least three years leading data engineering, data architecture, data integration, or enterprise analytics initiatives.
- Demonstrated experience taking over complex projects already in progress and becoming productive with limited ramp-up time.
- Working knowledge of ETL/ELT pipelines, data warehouses or lakehouses, relational databases, data modeling, and system integrations.
- Ability to review architecture diagrams, source-to-target mappings, and technical requirements and identify their implications for delivery.
- Practical understanding of SQL sufficient to follow data validation discussions and collaborate on troubleshooting with engineers.
- Proven ability to manage cross-team dependencies, technical risks, scope changes, and competing priorities.
- Experience coordinating testing, release planning, and stakeholder acceptance for data solutions.
- Strong communication skills and experience using project delivery tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, or Microsoft Project.
- Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Prior hands-on experience in data engineering, BI development, database development, systems integration, or technical business analysis.
- Experience with master data management, data governance, metadata, lineage, or data quality programs.
- Experience delivering projects in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, or another regulated environment.
- Experience with cloud data platforms and modernization or migration initiatives.
- PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, or a relevant cloud certification.
Expected Outcomes During the Initial Contract
- Complete a structured transition and establish ownership of active work.
- Validate the delivery plan, priorities, dependencies, and near-term commitments.
- Keep agreed milestones on track and surface risks early enough for action.
- Maintain clear project documentation and reporting to support ongoing continuity.
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