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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Assistant Program Manager

💰 $ - $

🎯 Role Definition

The Assistant Program Manager supports the planning, execution, monitoring, and delivery of one or more programs or major projects. This role works cross-functionally with product, engineering, finance, procurement, operations, and external partners to ensure program objectives, timelines, quality standards, and budget targets are met. The Assistant Program Manager drives program governance, risk mitigation, stakeholder engagement, status reporting, and continuous improvement while escalating issues and enabling the Program Manager to focus on strategic decisions.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Project Coordinator or Project Administrator transitioning to program-level responsibilities.
  • Junior Program Analyst or Business Analyst with exposure to cross-functional initiatives.
  • Operations or Product Coordinator who has supported multi-workstream delivery.

Advancement To:

  • Program Manager
  • Senior Program Manager / Program Lead
  • PMO Lead or Portfolio Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Product Operations Manager
  • Delivery Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead day-to-day program coordination across multiple workstreams, ensuring deliverables, milestones, and dependencies are tracked and aligned to the program roadmap, escalation paths are clear, and remediation plans are executed when slippage occurs.
  • Drive creation, maintenance, and continuous refinement of program schedules (Gantt, milestone charts) and detailed work breakdown structures (WBS) to provide reliable, auditable timelines for stakeholders and senior leadership.
  • Act as the primary point of contact for cross-functional stakeholders—including engineering, product, legal, finance, procurement, and vendor partners—facilitating alignment meetings, clarifying requirements, and documenting decisions to reduce rework and ambiguity.
  • Prepare and present concise, data-driven program status reports and executive briefings that summarize progress vs. plan, budget burn, key risks and issues, mitigation status, and impact to business outcomes.
  • Manage program budgeting and cost tracking activities: maintain budget forecasts, monitor actual spend vs. plan, validate invoices and change orders, and coordinate with finance on accruals and variance explanations.
  • Implement and uphold program governance processes (change control, decision logs, RACI matrices, milestone acceptance criteria) to ensure auditable change history and consistent decision-making across the program lifecycle.
  • Identify, document, and mitigate program-level risks and issues; develop contingency and escalation strategies and coordinate cross-functional owners to execute corrective actions with measurable deadlines.
  • Facilitate cross-team backlog grooming and prioritization sessions with product and engineering leads to ensure program priorities are reflected in sprint plans and that dependencies are resolved proactively.
  • Coordinate vendor and contractor activities: manage SOWs, onboarding, deliverable acceptance, performance monitoring, and contractual escalations to ensure vendors deliver to program quality and schedule expectations.
  • Drive requirements traceability and scope management by capturing functional and non-functional requirements, validating acceptance criteria, and preventing scope creep through formal change requests.
  • Lead program onboarding and offboarding for new team members and partners; document playbooks, runbooks, and knowledge transfer artifacts to maintain program continuity.
  • Develop and maintain key performance indicators (KPIs) and program dashboards (outcomes, delivery metrics, quality metrics) and use them to inform continuous improvement initiatives and executive decision-making.
  • Coordinate integrated testing cycles (UAT, integration, regression) across multiple teams, track test plans and defect remediation, and ensure release readiness criteria are met before launch.
  • Support release management and go-to-market planning by synchronizing cross-functional readiness activities, conducting release readiness reviews, and maintaining release logs and rollback plans.
  • Execute stakeholder communications plans: craft targeted messaging for executive sponsors, business partners, and program teams, and manage a cadence of communications (steering committees, status updates, newsletters).
  • Drive post-implementation reviews and lessons-learned workshops; capture improvement opportunities and translate findings into actionable process changes for future program phases.
  • Maintain program documentation repositories (decision logs, architecture diagrams, risk registers, status decks) to ensure transparency and enable rapid onboarding for new stakeholders.
  • Assist in resource planning and capacity management: identify staffing gaps, recommend resource allocations, and coordinate hiring or contractor engagements in partnership with HR and resource managers.
  • Monitor compliance and regulatory requirements applicable to the program, escalate potential non-compliance, and coordinate remediation with legal, compliance, and security teams.
  • Support continuous process improvement by identifying bottlenecks in delivery workflows, piloting process changes (agile, scaled-agile frameworks), and measuring impact to cycle time and quality.
  • Champion data integrity and reporting quality: collaborate with data teams to validate metrics, ensure definitions are consistent, and automate recurring reports where possible to improve decision velocity.
  • Provide hands-on project coordination during critical path activities, stepping in to remove blockers, reallocate resources, and ensure on-time delivery of key milestones.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist with procurement and vendor evaluation by preparing RFP materials, comparing vendor responses, and documenting selection rationale.
  • Support internal audits and evidence collection for compliance reviews related to program activities.
  • Mentor junior program staff and provide guidance on program processes, tools, and stakeholder engagement best practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Program and project management methodologies: strong practical experience with Agile (Scrum/Kanban), Waterfall, and hybrid approaches; ability to tailor methodology to program complexity.
  • Schedule and resource planning: mastery of MS Project, Smartsheet, or equivalent tools for building integrated schedules and resource forecasts.
  • Issue, risk and change management: experience using risk registers, RAID logs and formal change control procedures to minimize scope creep and protect timelines.
  • Budget management and financial tracking: experience developing program budgets, forecasting, variance analysis, and coordinating with finance teams.
  • Stakeholder & vendor management: proven ability to manage contracts, SOWs, SLAs and vendor performance metrics.
  • Reporting & dashboarding: strong Excel skills and familiarity with BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) to create executive dashboards and automated reports.
  • Collaboration tools & documentation: hands-on experience with Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, and collaborative communication platforms (Slack, MS Teams).
  • Testing and release coordination: knowledge of UAT, integration testing, defect tracking, and release management processes.
  • Data literacy & metrics definition: ability to define KPIs, validate data sources, and work with analytics teams to ensure metric integrity.
  • Process improvement & governance: experience implementing SOPs, process playbooks, and PMO frameworks to scale program delivery.
  • Contract and procurement fundamentals: understanding of vendor contracting, invoicing cycles, and procurement governance.
  • Basic technical fluency: the ability to read high-level architectural diagrams, understand APIs/integrations, and converse with engineering teams about technical trade-offs.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional verbal and written communication: can craft executive summaries, influence senior stakeholders, and convey complex status concisely.
  • Stakeholder influence and negotiation: ability to gain alignment across competing priorities and negotiate trade-offs with diplomacy.
  • Problem solving and critical thinking: proactively identifies root causes and designs pragmatic, measurable corrective actions.
  • Leadership without authority: capacity to motivate cross-functional teams, facilitate decisions, and drive execution even when direct authority is limited.
  • Time management and prioritization: excels at juggling multiple concurrent deliverables and re-prioritizing under shifting business needs.
  • Attention to detail and quality orientation: ensures artifacts, reports, and acceptance criteria are accurate and clear.
  • Adaptability and resilience: comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-paced environments and leading teams through change.
  • Conflict resolution and escalation management: mediates disagreements and escalates effectively to keep program momentum.
  • Coaching and mentorship: supports the development of junior staff and elevates team capability through feedback and knowledge sharing.
  • Emotional intelligence and stakeholder empathy: reads organizational dynamics and crafts communications that build trust and credibility.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Project Management, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field; or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree plus 1–2 years specialized program execution experience OR
  • Master's degree (MBA, MPM) or advanced certificate in Project/Program Management.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Business Administration
  • Project / Program Management
  • Industrial Engineering
  • Information Technology / Computer Science
  • Public Administration
  • Supply Chain / Operations Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2–7 years of progressive project/program coordination and delivery experience supporting multi-team initiatives.

Preferred:

  • 3–5+ years supporting or managing programs in a matrixed environment, with demonstrated experience in stakeholder management, budgeting, change control, and cross-functional delivery. PMP, PgMP, ACP, or equivalent certifications are a strong advantage.
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