Project Manager at Givzey

About the role

This role sits next to our Product Manager and inside the Engineering team. You’ll own the operational side of how we plan, ship, and report on work: sprint ceremonies, ticket hygiene, release coordination, and cross-functional program management across product, engineering, ML, and CS.

This is not a passive project management role. You’ll be a hands-on operator responsible for improving how the team works and ensuring that what we build gets delivered effectively.

Who thrives here

The ideal person for this role likes the craft of project management more than the title of project manager. They have opinions about how teams should work but aren’t dogmatic, they treat methodology as a tool not a rulebook, and they’d rather build a useful spreadsheet than implement heavy framework. They’re comfortable being the only PM in a room of engineers, can follow a technical debate without needing translation, and aren’t afraid to push back when a senior dev says “just trust me.” They care about where the work lands; the dollars our product helps move go to university scholarships, hospital research, and food banks, and that should matter to whoever takes this seat. They’re curious about AI as a product surface rather than a hype cycle, and stoked by building infrastructure from scratch instead of inheriting it polished.

What you’ll do

Sprint operations

• Run sprint ceremonies across a two-week cadence, including pre-planning, planning, demos, and retrospectives
• Drive ticket readiness and ensure work entering a sprint is well-defined and actionable
• Own sprint-level artifacts, including a company-wide planned work digest

Ticket hygiene

• Maintain high-quality tickets with clear acceptance criteria, appropriate sizing, and correct prioritization
• Ensure work is properly structured (parents, dependencies, scope)
• Identify and clean up orphaned, duplicate, or stale tickets
• Push back on stories that are not ready for development

Cross-functional program management

• Coordinate initiatives that span multiple teams, including Product, Engineering, ML, and Customer Success
• Manage dependencies across areas such as integrations, data pipelines, and customer readiness
• Act as the connective tissue to keep projects moving forward

Release coordination

• Track what is included in each release
• Draft release notes and communicate updates clearly to stakeholders
• Partner with Customer Success to prepare for customer-facing changes
• Keep teams informed without creating unnecessary noise

Process improvement

• Identify gaps and inefficiencies in current workflows
• Propose and implement practical improvements
• Continuously evolve team processes rather than simply maintaining them

What We’re Looking For

Experience

4+ years as a project manager, technical program manager, or scrum master in a software organization.

Working Style

• Comfortable in an engineering room. You can follow a technical debate without needing translation.
• Not afraid to push back when a senior dev says “just trust me.”
• You care about the craft of project management more than the title.
• You have opinions about how teams should work, but aren’t dogmatic. Methodology is a tool, not a rulebook.
• You’d rather build a useful spreadsheet than implement a heavy framework.
• Comfortable being the only PM in a room of engineers.

Mindset

• Strong written communication. A lot of our work happens asynchronously and in writing.
• Comfort with ambiguity. We’re early enough that “the process” is whatever you build.
• You care about where the work lands. The dollars our product helps move go to university scholarships, hospital research, and food banks, and that should matter to you.
• Curious about AI as a product surface, not just a hype cycle.
• Excited by building infrastructure from scratch instead of inheriting something polished.

Nice to have

• Experience in nonprofit tech, fundraising, or B2B SaaS for nonprofits
• Familiarity with AI or ML product workflows
• Background coordinating CRM integrations (eg. Salesforce, Raiser’s Edge, etc)

What this isn’t

A pure scrum master role. We don’t need someone to facilitate ceremonies and disappear. We need a partner who can make decisions about scope, priority, and process, and who’s comfortable owning outcomes.