Project Manager, Backend & SRE Delivery

Kargo•New York, NY

About The Position

Kargo creates powerful moments of connection between brands and consumers to build businesses. Every day, our 600+ employees work to radically raise the bar on what agentic AI, CTV, eCommerce, social, and mobile can do to deliver unique ad experiences across the world’s most premium platforms. Taking a creative science approach to all we do, we continuously innovate solutions that outperform industry benchmarks and client expectations. Now 20+ years strong, Kargo has offices in NYC, Chicago, LA, Dallas, Sydney, Auckland, London and Waterford, Ireland. Kargo, the premium mobile publisher platform, is seeking a motivated and detail-oriented Project Manager to support backend feature delivery and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) initiatives. In this role, you will work closely with backend engineers, SREs, SMEs, and cross functional stakeholders to ensure reliable, predictable delivery of backend services and platform capabilities in a fast-paced, distributed environment. This role does not require hands-on engineering experience, but does require strong comfort working with highly technical teams, complex systems, and operationally critical workflows.

Requirements

3–5 years of project management experience working with software engineering teams.
Experience supporting backend, platform, infrastructure, or SRE teams in a delivery-focused role.
Strong understanding of Agile development and the software delivery lifecycle.
Comfort working with complex technical systems and technical terminology, without needing to design or implement them.
Experience using Jira or similar tools for planning and tracking work.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in high-availability or operationally critical systems.
Familiarity with incident management, on-call workflows, or reliability-focused processes.
Experience in Ad Technology or similarly complex backend-driven domains.

Responsibilities

Plan, execute, and track platform-focused initiatives from definition through release.
Own roadmap delivery timelines and execution plans for assigned backend and SRE projects, proactively identifying risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs.
Partner with Engineering leads to ensure work is well-scoped, sequenced appropriately, and aligned with team capacity.
Work closely with backend engineers and SREs to understand system dependencies, operational considerations, and delivery constraints.
Support delivery of backend features, infrastructure improvements, reliability initiatives, and technical debt work.
Help translate technical work into clear plans and status updates for Product and non-technical stakeholders.
Facilitate sprint planning, stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives for backend and SRE teams.
Ensure operational and reliability work (e.g., maintenance, on-call follow-ups, incident remediation) is properly planned and visible alongside feature work.
Support backlog refinement and prioritization in partnership with Product and Engineering leadership.
Identify and manage cross-team dependencies across services, systems, and platforms.
Proactively surface delivery and operational risks, including capacity constraints, reliability concerns, and competing priorities.
Assist in planning and tracking work related to availability, performance, monitoring, and incident follow-ups.
Support incident response workflows by helping coordinate communication, tracking action items, and following up on post-incident work.
Ensure post-release and post-incident learnings are documented and incorporated into future planning.
Provide clear, concise status updates to stakeholders, including risks, progress, and upcoming milestones.
Maintain accurate project plans, timelines, and delivery artifacts in tools such as Jira and Confluence.
Facilitate effective collaboration across globally distributed teams.
Demonstrate strong execution ownership, follow-through, and attention to detail.
Continuously seek opportunities to improve delivery predictability and team workflows.
Operate independently on defined initiatives while knowing when to escalate or seek support.