Technical Project Manager — Data, Cloud & AI
Engagements
Location: Chennai, India (Hybrid) Experience: 8+ years Reports to: Director of Engineering
Team: Delivery / Engineering
About SquareShift
SquareShift is a boutique consulting firm specializing in cloud modernization, data engineering,
AI/ML, and observability. We are a Google Cloud Premier Partner, Looker Delivery-Verified
Partner, and Elastic SI/Reseller Partner, with deep expertise in BigQuery, Vertex AI, Looker, and
Elasticsearch. We deliver enterprise-grade work without the enterprise overhead — selective,
expert-led, and senior-staffed end to end.
We work with ISVs, SaaS companies, and enterprises across financial services, retail,
insurance, and e-commerce. Our engagements span Snowflake-to-BigQuery migrations,
Tableau-to-Looker modernizations, agentic AI products, and large-scale observability rollouts.
The Role
We are looking for a Technical Project Manager who started their career in technology —
engineering, QA, technical support, BA, or similar — and pivoted into project management. You
are technically literate. You can sit through an architecture review and follow the conversation.
But your strength is delivery, not code, and you have built your career on running teams and
shipping outcomes.
This is a deeply client-facing role. You will be the face of SquareShift to multiple clients at
once — running steering committees, leading status calls, walking senior client stakeholders
through progress and decisions, and handling escalations directly. Strong written and spoken
communication, executive presence, and the ability to build trust quickly with senior client
stakeholders are non-negotiable.
You will run 4–6 concurrent engagements at different phases — one in discovery, two
mid-build, one ramping down — and you need to context-switch cleanly between them. Each
client will feel like you are giving them your full attention. Juggling parallel engagements without
dropping balls is the core operational skill of this role.
Our engagements are technical — data pipelines, cloud architectures, AI/ML systems,
observability platforms. You do not need to design or build these. You need to understand the
broad shape of what is being built, ask sensible questions, translate between engineering and
the client, and partner closely with your tech leads who carry the technical depth.
We are a boutique. You will have ownership, autonomy, and impact from week one.
What You Will Do - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Own the client relationship across 4–6 concurrent engagements — you are the
primary point of contact, the escalation path, and the trusted advisor on the ground
Run client governance for each engagement — weekly status, monthly steering
committees, executive updates, escalations, and change requests — and keep all of
them on track simultaneously
Build executive presence with senior client stakeholders (Directors, VPs, CTOs) and
represent SquareShift in the room with credibility and clarity
Context-switch cleanly across multiple engagements at different phases —
discovery, build, stabilization, ramp-down — without losing thread on any of them
Run delivery governance across all your engagements — sprint planning, milestone
reviews, demos, retros — and ensure each team has the cadence it needs
Maintain a broad, high-level understanding of what each team is building, enough to
translate progress and risks to non-technical client stakeholders
Partner with tech leads on scoping and estimation — your job is to ask the right
questions, surface assumptions, and ensure delivery risks are visible; technical judgment
stays with the leads
Maintain a single, current view of all your projects — plans, RAID logs, resource
forecasts, financial health — so you can answer any leadership question on any
engagement at any time
Flag scope creep early and manage change orders cleanly with the client
Drive Agile and hybrid delivery models (Scrum, Kanban, milestone-based) — pick the
right tool for each engagement, not dogma
Track financial health across your portfolio — burn, margin, utilization — and partner
with leadership on commercial decisions
Lead pre-sales support on selected opportunities — discovery questionnaires, proposal
walk-throughs, SOW reviews (effort estimation done with tech leads)
Coach delivery leads on PM rigor; raise the bar on documentation, communication, and
predictability
Improve internal delivery playbooks and governance templates as the firm scales
What We Are Looking For
Must-have - - - - - - - - - -
8+ years total experience in IT/technology delivery, with an early-career foundation in
a technical role (engineering, QA, technical support, business analysis, or similar)
before transitioning into project management
3+ years in a directly client-facing PM, TPM, or delivery lead role at a consulting
firm, GSI, or product company with a services arm — you have personally owned senior
client relationships, not just supported them
Proven track record running multiple parallel engagements (3+ at a time) with
distinct clients, timelines, and tech stacks — and the operating habits to keep them all on
track
Strong executive presence and stakeholder management skills — comfortable
presenting to and pushing back on Directors, VPs, and CTOs on scope, timeline, and
commercial topics
Broad technical literacy — you can follow a high-level conversation about cloud, data,
or AI systems, ask sensible questions, and translate between engineering and business;
you do not need to be hands-on
Strong command of delivery methodologies — Agile/Scrum, Kanban, milestone/waterfall
— and the judgment to know when to use which
Excellent written and verbal communication in English — you can write a crisp status
update, run a steering committee, lead a difficult escalation call, and de-escalate a tense
client conversation
Process-driven mindset balanced with startup pragmatism — you build structure where it
is missing, but you do not let process become the work
Result-oriented — you measure success by what shipped and what the client got, not by
tickets closed
Comfort with project tooling (Jira, Confluence, Asana, Notion) and reporting tools
(Looker, Sheets, Excel)
Strongly preferred - - - - -
Exposure to GCP, BigQuery, Looker, Snowflake, Databricks, or Elasticsearch in past
delivery roles
Experience delivering data platform, BI migration, or AI/ML engagements
Experience managing fixed-price and T&M engagements, including commercial
governance and change orders
PMP, PRINCE2, CSM, or SAFe certification
Pre-sales / solution-shaping experience
Who You Are - - - - - - - - -
You started your career in technology and never lost your curiosity for it — but you found
your strength in running teams and delivering outcomes, not in writing code
You are at your best in front of clients. You build trust fast, communicate with clarity,
and stay composed when the conversation gets difficult
You can hold five engagements in your head at once without dropping context —
each client feels like they have your full attention
You partner closely with tech leads — you trust their technical judgment, you ask sharp
questions, and you make sure delivery risks get surfaced early
You bring calm to chaos; when a project is on fire, you are the person clients and
engineers both want in the room
You write well — your status updates are read because they are useful, not because
they are mandatory
You are direct: you raise risks early, push back on scope creep, and have hard
conversations with clients and engineers when needed, with respect
You take ownership — you do not wait for a process to exist before you solve a problem
You stay curious about the modern data, cloud, and AI landscape we operate in
Why SquareShift - - - - -
Senior-led firm — you will work with experts, not be the only adult in the room
Real ownership from week one — boutique scale, enterprise-grade work
Diverse portfolio — data engineering, AI products, cloud migrations, observability — you
will not get bored
Direct exposure to leadership and clients — your work is visible and impactful
Active investment in AI tooling and ways of working — we use Claude Code, Gemini,
and modern delivery tooling across the firm