Technical Delivery Manager (IT Manager I) - TBD

Full Job Description

Job Purpose:

The South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) seeks a Growing Pathways for Students (GPS) Technical Delivery Manager to lead coordinated delivery of data-driven initiatives supporting GPS — South Carolina’s K-12 decision-support system.

This role operates at the intersection of delivery execution, data stewardship, and release governance, ensuring that cross-functional initiatives spanning analytics, engineering, operations, and business stakeholders progress from planning through production with managed risk and verified quality.

GPS delivers critical data services and visualizations that directly inform Accountability metrics for students, teachers, schools, and districts statewide, making predictable delivery and rigorous quality control essential.

This is a coordination-heavy individual contributor role; success is measured by reliable releases, high confidence in data accuracy at release, and strong stakeholder trust in delivered outcomes.

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate end-to-end delivery of complex, cross-functional GPS initiatives using Agile or iterative delivery approaches, managing backlogs and leading sprint planning for developer and analyst teams.
• Manage dependencies, risks, and delivery tradeoffs across analytics, engineering, operations, and business stakeholder teams; proactively escalate blockers and options to IT leadership to support timely decision-making.
• Oversee contributor delivery commitments for GPS code, reports, and data services, ensuring teams meet sprint commitments and production-readiness criteria.
• Own the quality assurance lifecycle for GPS releases — establishing test plans, coordinating QA execution, and validating that data outputs are accurate and consistent with published Accountability metrics before release.
• Design and enforce release governance processes: release readiness criteria, go/no-go decision frameworks, release notes, and clear stakeholder communications that prevent misinterpretation of data changes.
• Conduct pre-release data accuracy reviews, cross-referencing GPS visualizations with Accountability metric calculations to identify and resolve discrepancies prior to publication.
• Partner with analytics, data engineering, and BI teams to ensure data pipelines from source systems (Student Information System, Assessment Data connections, EdplanSC, etc.) are flowing well.
• Facilitate sprint ceremonies (stand-ups, reviews, retrospectives) and cross-team coordination meetings; produce clear delivery status reports and risk registers for Office of Information Technology (OIT) leadership and program stakeholders.
• Uphold Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and SC data governance standards across all GPS delivery decisions, ensuring student and educator data is handled with appropriate privacy controls.
• Continuously improve delivery practices, contributing to OIT documentation including release checklists, runbooks, and lessons-learned records.

This position is located in the Office of Information Technology.

Requirements

A bachelor's degree in communications, business administration, information technology, mathematics, statistics, management information science or a related field and experience in telecommunications, data processing and/or information technology. Relevant experience may substitute for the bachelor's degree on a year-for-year basis.

Qualifications

• Minimum four to six (4–6) years of experience in IT delivery management, project management, program coordination, or a closely related technical role, with demonstrated experience coordinating cross-functional technology initiatives in an Agile or iterative delivery environment.
• Proven experience managing delivery of data-driven initiatives where accuracy, consistency, and release quality are critical — analytics, reporting, or business intelligence platforms preferred.
• Strong facilitation and communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders; ability to translate technical risks into clear options for leadership.
• Experience with quality assurance practices — test planning, defect tracking, and release validation — in a data or analytics context.
• Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, Business Administration, Data Analytics, or a related field.
• Preferred: At least one (1) PM or Agile certification preferred: PMP (PMI), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM I/II), SAFe Scrum Master (SSM) or SAFe Agilist, or CAPM.
• Preferred: Experience with K-12 education data systems, statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS), or public-sector Accountability reporting platforms; familiarity with Power BI or Tableau release cycles.
• Preferred: Proficiency with Jira and Confluence for sprint management and documentation; knowledge of EDFacts, IDEA, or Title I federal reporting.

Additional Information

As a part of a generous compensation package, we offer comprehensive benefits that include generous paid time off, preeminent health care benefits, professional development opportunities, pension, and a 401(k).

The South Carolina Department of Education offers an exceptional benefits package that includes:

• Health, Dental, Vision, Long Term Disability, and Life Insurance for Employee, Spouse, and Children.
• 15 days annual (vacation) leave per year.
• 15 days sick leave per year.
• 13 paid holidays.
• State Retirement Plan and Deferred Compensation Programs.

ONLY THOSE APPLICANTS CHOSEN FOR AN INTERVIEW WILL BE NOTIFIED BY LETTER THAT THE POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED.

http://www.ed.sc.gov/jobs/human-resources/title-ix-nondiscrimination/