Program Director Jobs in Columbia, MD (NOW HIRING)

Description

About Us 

eSimplicity is a modern digital services company that partners with government agencies to improve the lives and protect the well-being of all Americans, from veterans and service members to children, families, and seniors. Our engineers, designers, and strategists cut through complexity to create intuitive products and services that equip federal agencies with solutions to courageously transform today for a better tomorrow. 

Position overview 

The Program Director will provide executive leadership for eSimplicity's support of a large-scale federal data and analytics modernization program. The program includes mission-critical production services and long-horizon modernization across cloud platform operations, governed data assets, analytics products, public-facing reporting, APIs, user support, documentation, and AI-enabled capabilities. 

This role is responsible for overall program performance, strategic alignment with the customer, contract and budget governance, stakeholder escalation, and delivery health. The Program Director will operate in a transparent, collaborative delivery model with customer product owners, contracting stakeholders, security and privacy stakeholders, data owners, product teams, and partner organizations. This role is ideal for a candidate who thrives in a dynamic environment and is adept at navigating a complex, evolving program that must simultaneously sustain production operations and drive long-horizon modernization across a multi-year period of performance. 

Responsibilities 

• Provide executive accountability for program performance, strategic alignment, contract and budget governance, stakeholder escalation, and overall delivery health. 
• Lead an integrated, multi-team delivery model that maintains coverage across platform foundations, cloud operations, security, data supply chain, metadata, governed data asset operations, analytics experience, dashboard governance, public-facing products, AI and advanced platform enablement, external exchange, APIs, partner integrations, user success, documentation, and change management. 
• Maintain a highly collaborative operating model that gives customer personnel continuous visibility into code, documentation, backlogs, metrics, dashboards, risks, decisions, and operational status in approved systems of record. 
• Oversee program deliverables and management artifacts, including roadmap and PI Planning packages, monthly status, risk, and performance reporting, quality inputs, staffing and retention information, transition-in and transition-out readiness, and continuity planning. 
• Provide leadership over applicable coverage areas, including cross-cutting program leadership, architecture coordination, product management, engineering operations, data operations, support operations, domain expertise, and enterprise stakeholder engagement. 
• Promote reuse, portability, documentation quality, customer ownership of artifacts, and sustainable operations across code, infrastructure, analytics products, runbooks, AI configurations, metadata, service guides, and transition materials. 
• Serve as the primary interface to client leadership, product owners, and security stakeholders, cloud and platform partners, product teams, and directed policy or operations groups owning stakeholder escalation and maintaining a collaborative, responsive, and trusting relationship. 
• Collaborate with government partners on the strategic direction of the program, confirming alignment with agency data strategy imperatives and measurable progress toward program goals.  
• Ensure program management practices make outcomes measurable across service reliability, data quality, delivery flow, engineering health, security and compliance, user success, analytics adoption, cost transparency, AI services, AIOps, and metadata maturity. 
• Foster a badge-less culture of innovation and continuous improvement, driving cross-functional team success and coordinating across related programs and platform teams.   

Requirements

Required qualifications 

• 10+ years in IT consulting, with significant agile project/program management experience in the federal government space.   
• All candidates must pass public trust clearance through the U.S. Federal Government. This requires candidates to either be U.S. citizens or pass clearance through the Foreign National Government System which will require that candidates have lived within the United States for at least 3 out of the previous 5 years, have a valid and non-expired passport from their country of birth and appropriate VISA/work permit documentation 
• Bachelor's degree 
• Demonstrated ability to lead large, complex, multi-team cloud data, analytics, platform, or digital services programs in close partnership with Government or enterprise stakeholders. 
• Experience providing executive-level program governance, stakeholder escalation, risk management, delivery transparency, performance reporting, and budget or contract oversight. 
• Deep understanding of CMS policies, regulations, and security and privacy expectations, with direct experience in Medicaid, CHIP, or comparable federal data and reporting programs.  
• Strong grasp of program financials, staffing, and subcontract management, with a track record of maintaining budget integrity and operational excellence. 
• Ability to lead teams operating through SAFe Agile or comparable multi-team agile delivery models, including PI Planning, cross-team coordination, backlog transparency, demos, retrospectives, and continuous improvement. 
• Working understanding of cloud operations, DevSecOps, data engineering, metadata maturity, business intelligence and analytics, public-facing reporting, API services, AI governance, user support, documentation, and change management. 
• Ability to oversee delivery in customer-approved systems of record for work management, source control, documentation, collaboration, dashboarding, observability, and reporting. 
• Knowledge of federal security, privacy, accessibility, data-use, and Government data-rights expectations applicable to systems handling sensitive Government information. 
• Ability to comply with customer-specific security, privacy, accessibility, quality, training, and data-handling requirements for assigned systems and data. 

Preferred qualifications 

• Experience supporting federal, public sector, healthcare, or other regulated data, analytics, oversight, reporting, or public transparency programs. 
• Experience leading enterprise data platform, governed self-service analytics, public dashboard, API, AI/ML, or cloud modernization programs. 
• Familiarity with modern cloud platforms, data platforms, data catalogs, infrastructure-as-code tools, source control, work management tools, collaboration platforms, BI tools, identity services, observability platforms, and security tooling. 
• Experience with cost management, continuity planning, transition-in and transition-out activities, joint operating agreements, and cross-vendor or cross-program coordination. 
• Preferred certifications may include PMP, PgMP, SAFe Lean Portfolio Management, SAFe Release Train Engineer, SAFe Agilist, FinOps, cloud, data governance, or security certifications. 

Working Environment:
eSimplicity supports a remote work environment operating within the Eastern time zone so we can work with and respond to our government clients. Expected hours are 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern unless otherwise directed by manager. 

Occasional travel for training and project meetings. It is estimated to be less than 5% per year. 

Benefits:
eSimplicity offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement benefits, paid time off, paid holidays, life and disability insurance, and additional wellness and employee support programs. Eligibility may vary based on employment status and applicable plan terms. 

Reasonable Accommodation:
eSimplicity is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities during the application and hiring process. Applicants who need assistance or an accommodation should contact Human Resources.
 

Equal Employment Opportunity:
eSimplicity is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.