Strategic Operations Lead (PM Profile)

Backblaze External Website

20h

About The Position

This is a project/program management role embedded within CloudOps. The Strategic Operations Lead is primarily responsible for leading and coordinating strategic projects and operational initiatives, particularly large-scale CloudOps infrastructure, tooling, and hardware initiatives, to ensure they are delivered on time, within scope, and aligned with business objectives. The role provides structure, visibility, and accountability across cross-functional workstreams from planning through execution and closeout. The majority of this role will focus on project coordination and delivery, including developing project plans down to the task level, managing timelines and dependencies, tracking deliverables, identifying risks and blockers, facilitating cross-functional alignment, and ensuring commitments and deadlines are met. Additional responsibilities include project reporting, process improvement, documentation, and other key Strategic Operations initiatives.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
5+ years of experience in project/program management, ideally within operations, infrastructure, data center environments, or a related field.
Strong organizational and communication skills.
Familiarity with project management methodologies and practices

Nice To Haves

PMP or similar certification preferred.
Jira & Confluence knowledge
Microsoft Office / Google Workspace
Power BI
Smartsheet, Microsoft Project, or similar project planning tools

Responsibilities

Lead and coordinate cross-functional projects and strategic operational initiatives from planning through completion.
Develop and maintain project plans, milestones, deliverables, dependencies, risks, issues, and action items.
Track project execution at the task level, ensuring every task has a clear owner and current status to support granular reporting and early risk detection.
Facilitate project meetings, document decisions, assign follow-up actions, and drive items through completion.
Maintain project documentation, status updates, decision logs, and supporting operational procedures.
Partner with stakeholders to define scope, priorities, timelines, ownership, and success criteria.
Establish clear project governance, meeting cadence, roles and responsibilities, and decision-making processes.
Coordinate cross-functional planning sessions, project reviews, and stakeholder updates.
Identify project risks, issues, and dependencies; proactively escalate blockers and delays to leadership and support timely resolution.
Communicate project status, schedule changes, decisions, and key impacts to stakeholders.
Track commitments, decisions, and follow-up items through completion to maintain project momentum.
Align projects and operational initiatives with established SOPs, documentation standards, and agreed requirements.
Promote consistent project governance, documentation, and execution practices.
Develop repeatable processes that improve planning, execution, and accountability.
Produce project dashboards, status reports, and executive-ready updates.
Track project health, milestones, risks, dependencies, resource needs, and key KPIs.
Prepare recurring portfolio and initiative reports for leadership and stakeholders.