Senior R&D Project Manager

SAS•Cary HQ, NC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The SaaS team is seeking a Senior R&D Project Manager to lead planning and execution of projects supporting SAS’s Software as a Service offering. The role helps shape software products into cloud-native, CI/CD-driven solutions and ensures projects are delivered predictably, aligned with business goals, and executed with high quality in a dynamic, globally distributed environment. The project manager partners with engineering, product, and cross-functional teams to drive execution, manage dependencies, and align stakeholders across the full project lifecycle, from planning and estimation through execution and delivery.

Requirements

Eight years of experience in software project management, preferably in agile environments.
Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative field, preferably Computer Science or a related discipline.
Proven experience delivering projects end to end across planning, execution, and delivery.
Strong experience working in SaaS or continuous delivery environments.
Excellent stakeholder management skills, including negotiation, communication, and conflict resolution.
Experience with Jira or similar tools.
Ability to influence without authority.
Ability to manage pressure, deadlines, and competing priorities.
Equivalent combinations of related education, training, and experience may be considered.

Nice To Haves

PMP, CSM, or equivalent certifications.

Responsibilities

Lead deadline-driven, team-based projects by establishing clear objectives, requirements, scope, goals, and committed outcomes with teams and stakeholders.
Plan, prioritize, forecast, implement, and adjust delivery schedules, scope, resourcing, and quality in consultation with stakeholders.
Negotiate resource needs and coordinate technical resources, including domestic and international resources.
Maintain project plans, delivery forecasts, schedules, decision logs, action items, issue lists, risk registers, and status reports.
Coordinate and communicate activities across team members and stakeholders; facilitate meetings and drive action-item ownership and follow-up.
Identify, track, and coordinate risks and delivery impediments, including blocked or aging work, and drive mitigation and escalation as appropriate.
Manage project scope and expectations, and constructively negotiate conflicts and areas of high risk.
Use methodologies, processes, project tools, and best practices to accelerate delivery.
Identify and coordinate project dependencies and stakeholder influences; monitor cross-team handoffs and wait states; collaborate with organizations sharing delivery responsibility.
Serve as a central point of contact across the Company, including Legal, Marketing, and SAS.com, to maintain alignment and project success.
Manage multiple large-scale, complex projects and determine and evolve methods and procedures for new assignments.
Provide timely, audience-appropriate delivery information to stakeholders and communicate project status, blockers, threatened dependencies, and pending decisions to senior and executive management as needed.