Program Manager Contract Jobs in Newport, MN (NOW HIRING)

Accessibility Operations Program Manager (Contract)

Eagan, MN, United States (Hybrid)

Contract (8 months 12 days)

Published 8 days ago

Project Management

Power BI

Program Management

Job Title: Accessibility Operations Program Manager

Job Description

The Accessibility Operations Program Manager plays a critical role in ensuring the smooth, scalable, and strategic operation of the Thomson Reuters Accessibility Program. This role is ideal for someone who excels at navigating ambiguity, demonstrates strong critical thinking and problem solving skills, and thrives in a dynamic, fast moving environment. The Program Manager will support operational excellence across accessibility initiatives, manage agile ceremonies including overseeing backlog prioritization and capacity planning, and drive cross functional collaboration with strategic partners including Design, Product, Engineering, and Legal. This role requires exceptional bias for action, organizational skills, the ability to influence without authority, and a strong sense of ownership. Experience with Azure DevOps (ADO) is essential. Familiarity with reporting and visualization tools such as Power BI is a plus. This role also requires foundational development and automation skills, leveraging tools like Power Apps, Robotics Process Automation (RPA), and related platforms to enhance operational efficiency and reduce tactical workload.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary stage gate for incoming work requests, ensuring clarity, complete information, prioritization readiness, and adherence to intake SLA timeframes.
• Maintain an organized, accurate, and transparent backlog across accessibility workstreams, ensuring all work items include complete requirements, acceptance criteria, estimates, and required metadata. Lead agile ceremonies across multiple accessibility teams, driving smooth execution, proactive issue resolution, and cross team alignment.
• Own and maintain the operational frameworks governing intake, prioritization, backlog management, capacity planning, sprint planning, grooming, and reporting. Communicate impacts to leadership and ensure alignment with operational workflows. Forecast and balance workloads across teams by partnering with managers to ensure accurate capacity planning and realistic sprint commitments.
• Ensure compliance with Azure DevOps best practices, including daily task updates, effort tracking, remaining/completed work accuracy, and proper sprint closure. Maintain essential program documentation, such as Ways of Working, ADO processes, intake workflows, and other operational guidelines.

Cross Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with Design, Product, Engineering, and other partners to ensure accurate scoping, intake readiness, and task refinement.
• Follow up with requesters to gather missing information or clarify requirements.
• Build strong relationships with stakeholders and act as a trusted advisor for timelines, process expectations, and prioritization.

Reporting & Data Quality

• Responsible for effective data integrity oversight across all ADO boards, including required fields, metadata, effort tracking, and status updates.
• Create dashboards, shared queries, and reporting artifacts for leadership demonstrating strong acumen for understanding reporting data and providing insights.
• Partner with accessibility specialists & managers to ensure accurate enforcement of required standards (e.g., daily updates, ADO comments, closing out tasks by sprint end).

Process Improvement & Strategy

• Identify and implement improvements to workflows, intake operations, agile practices, and sprint management.
• Recommend and implement automation and tooling enhancements, including Power BI and AI Driven reporting.
• Support SLAs, dashboard development, capacity models, reporting frameworks, and planning cycles.
• Help shape onward strategy for backlog prioritization, intake governance, and request and program management. Streamline processes and reduce manual effort.

Qualifications Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of program or project management experience in a technical or operational environment.
• Proven experience in backlog, sprint, and agile workflow management.
• Strong critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and problem solving ability.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, self direct, with strong bias for action.
• Excellent organizational skills with the ability to manage competing priorities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with ability to partner across multidisciplinary teams and communicate with leaders at all levels.
• Demonstrated hands on experience with Azure DevOps (ADO) and Power BI.
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience with automation tools such as Power Apps and RPA.
• Ability to influence without authority and build trust with stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with accessibility principles, WCAG, and accessibility program operations.
• Experience leveraging AI for process optimization.
• Agile or project management certifications (e.g., CSM, PMP, PMI-ACP).

What Success Looks Like

• A predictable, transparent, and well maintained backlog aligned to evolving program needs.
• Confident capacity planning enabling balanced workloads and on-time delivery.
• Strong cross-team relationships supported by clear processes and communications.
• Efficient intake processes, smooth sprint planning cycles, and accurate, actionable reporting.
• Self-initiate continuous improvement across operational frameworks, tooling, and workflows.
• Ability to work independently.
• Continuous demonstration of bias for action.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.

The pay range that the employer in good faith reasonably expects to pay for this position is $50 -$60/hr USD.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

Our optional benefits can include medical, dental, vision and retirement benefits.

Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis.

Tundra Technical Solutions (the operator of this Talent Community) is a global leader of contingent talent services. Our success and our clients’ success are built on a foundation of service excellence. We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Unincorporated LA County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: client provided property, including hardware (both of which may include data) entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all portable client computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon completion of the assignment, and; maintain the confidentiality of client proprietary, confidential, or non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected client information technology systems and related data security obligations.