The posting
ABOUT THE ROLE
The Team Manager is accountable for the performance of the team members assigned to the clients account — software engineers, a scrum master, a data scientist, and a QA automation tester. Delivery itself is run by the client: the client owns the backlog, the ceremonies, the sprint board, and release decisions. The Team Manager does not run delivery. What the Team Manager owns is our people: their KPIs, their output quality, their development, and company standing with the client. That requires real technical understanding of the work — enough to judge whether an engineer, tester, or data scientist is performing well, to set KPIs that mean something for each role, to spot process improvement opportunities, and to hold the performance conversation with the client on equal footing. This technical understanding is a hard requirement, not a preference. Hands-on engineering — coding, code review, architecture ownership — is not part of the role.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Technical understanding and performance oversight — core, non-negotiable:
- Understand the work each team member does well enough to judge it — what a software engineer, QA automation tester, data scientist, and scrum master each produce, and what good looks like for each.
- Define and track KPIs for every technical role on the team that measure real contribution, not activity — and review them with the team member regularly.
- Read the delivery signals the client works from — sprint boards, burndowns, velocity, defect reports — to verify our people are performing and to catch problems early.
- Assess output quality independently: know when work is genuinely complete and when it is not, without relying on someone else to interpret it.
- Validate client feedback on a team member — determine whether a performance concern is fair and push back with evidence when it is not.
- Identify process improvement opportunities from how the work actually flows and raise them with the client and with Origo leadership.
- Represent the team's performance and technical standing in client conversations without needing an engineer to translate.
- Flag delivery risks that originate with our team early — to the client and to Origo delivery leadership.
- Note the boundary: sprint planning, ceremonies, backlog, and release decisions are run by the client. This role does not own delivery; it owns Origo's people and their performance within it.
Team leadership:
- Create an inspiring team environment with an open communication culture
- Set clear team goals
- Delegate tasks and set deadlines
- Oversee day-to-day operations
- Monitor team performance and report on metrics
- Motivate team members
- Discover training needs and provide coaching
- Listen to team members' feedback and resolve any issues or conflicts
- Recognize high performance and reward accomplishments
- Suggest and organize team-building activities
- Build strong relationships with different POC's based on Portfolio's assigned
- Participating in CI Projects
- Hybrid work setup, with occasional on-site reporting as required by business needs
- Work schedule may be adjusted based on operational requirements
SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS
Educational background required / desired:
- Bachelor's Degree
- Or equivalent work experience
Work experience required / desired:
- Proven 5+ years of Team Leader experience
- Required: experience working with or alongside software delivery teams running agile ways of working (SDLC, Scrum/Kanban) — enough to follow the work, not to run it.
- Required: able to read sprint boards, burndowns, velocity, and defect reports in Jira and draw the right conclusions from them without support.
- Required: experience setting and managing performance KPIs for technical roles.
Communications skills required / desired:
- 9/10
MS Office applications proficiency required / desired:
- Advanced
Technical requirements — mandatory, assessed at interview:
- Can state what each role on the team produces and what done means for each — a reviewed and merged pull request, a passing automated test suite, a deployable build, a validated model output — and can tell when a deliverable is not actually done.
- Can read a sprint board and burndown and explain what it says about the team's performance.
- Can tell whether a story estimate is reasonable — knows why a task sized at 2 points is not an 8.
- Can set a meaningful KPI for an engineer, a tester, and a data scientist, and explain why each one measures contribution rather than activity.
- Can hold a performance conversation with the client about a technical team member, with evidence, and without an engineer present.
- Understands the SDLC end to end: requirements, build, test, release, support.
- Strongly preferred: background as a developer, tester, scrum master, or business analyst who moved into people management.
Leadership qualifications:
- Proven strong leadership and Influencing skills
- Strong ability to coach and motivate Team members.
- Excellent time management skills and the ability to prioritize work.
- Results-oriented and strong organizational skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Not required: hands-on coding, code review, architecture ownership, or running the client's delivery process.
