Program/Project Management Senior

USAA•San Antonio, NC

About The Position

As a dedicated Program/Project Management Senior, you will facilitate and drive the planning, execution, and delivery of moderately complex non-IT work efforts intended to accomplish business goals and objectives within prescribed timeframes and budgets. You will demonstrate an advanced understanding of how activities contribute to strategic business goals and operational objectives. You will collaborate with key stakeholders, vendors, and project/program teams to identify mutually beneficial outcomes for competing priorities and negotiate timelines to ensure objectives are met. The role drives low- to moderately complex work efforts, including AI/ML-driven initiatives, and coordinates complex efforts with a focus on the end-to-end AI/ML lifecycle. You will help bridge experimental model development and production deployment, and ensure plans address model-development milestones and engineering requirements for scalable deployment. You will support collaboration between Data Scientists and AI/ML Engineers, facilitate solutions to delivery challenges, remove technical and organizational impediments, and help ensure teams have the infrastructure, compute resources, and governance needed to meet project goals. The role also promotes MLOps standards and machine-learning CI/CD pipelines, and manages dependencies and handoffs needed to maintain models’ performance, scalability, and security in production. USAA’s mission is to empower members to achieve financial security through competitive products, exceptional service, and trusted advice. The company describes honesty, integrity, loyalty, and service as its core values and states that it supports active-duty military spouses. Roles may offer remote or hybrid flexibility for active-duty military spouses, consistent with applicable policy and business needs. Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree, or 4 years of relevant education and/or experience.
6 years of relevant experience in project or program management, including planning, tracking, and delivery.
Comprehensive knowledge and demonstrated application of project management tools and methodologies.
Collaboration skills in a matrixed environment, including providing consultative guidance to help solve enterprise-level issues.
Understanding of scope definition, process and solution mapping, process structures and components, and standard project-planning methodologies.
Experience supporting projects with complex deliverables, including information technology and dependencies across organizations.
In-depth understanding of risk-management policies and procedures.

Responsibilities

Drive implementation of low- to moderately complex work efforts, including AI/ML-driven initiatives, in collaboration with cross-functional teams such as Data Scientists and AI/ML Engineers.
Plan, direct, and coordinate complex work efforts across the end-to-end AI/ML lifecycle, accounting for model-development milestones and engineering requirements for scalable deployment.
Facilitate collaboration on alternatives to work-effort challenges with subject matter experts, considering AI application patterns and architectural constraints involved in operationalizing models.
Remove obstacles and impediments, including technical hurdles involving data-pipeline integration, feature-store management, model monitoring, and moving prototypes into production engineering.
Assist in defining work-effort controls and delivery, ensuring teams have necessary infrastructure, compute resources, and governance frameworks to meet goals and success criteria.
Identify and apply best practices and process improvements; drive adoption of MLOps standards and machine-learning CI/CD pipelines to improve model-delivery velocity and quality.
Coordinate Data Scientists and AI/ML Engineers, managing technical dependencies and handoffs to support model performance, scalability, and security in production.
Collaborate with stakeholders, vendors, and project/program teams to resolve competing priorities and negotiate timelines.
Facilitate planning, execution, and delivery of work efforts within prescribed timeframes and budgets.