Engagement Manager

Work Location: Hybrid (Washington, DC) or Remote (VA). Candidates within 75 miles of Washington, DC are expected to report to the DC office on a hybrid basis.

About the Role
Bluestaq is seeking an Engagement Manager to lead customer-facing delivery for complex technical engagements supporting U.S. federal missions. This role connects customer objectives with Bluestaq's secure data, cloud, and software engineering capabilities, turning mission needs into clear, executable delivery plans.

You will own the engagement lifecycle from planning through closeout, coordinating customer, Bluestaq, and partner teams across multiple workstreams. You will manage scope, schedule, financials, risks, dependencies, and communications while maintaining technical credibility and a clear focus on measurable mission outcomes. As needed, you will also support business development and proposal efforts by contributing delivery strategy, scope, staffing, schedule, risk, and pricing inputs. This is a hands-on delivery leadership role for someone who can bring structure to ambiguity, guide difficult decisions, and keep teams aligned through execution.

Why This Role Matters
Federal customers depend on delivery partners who understand both mission urgency and the discipline required to execute in secure, highly accountable environments. The Engagement Manager helps customers turn priorities into working capabilities while protecting delivery quality, contractual commitments, and trust. If you are energized by complex programs, direct customer partnership, and removing obstacles for technical teams, this role offers meaningful ownership and visible impact.

Key Responsibilities

• Engagement Leadership: Lead the full lifecycle of complex customer engagements, from kickoff and integrated planning through delivery, acceptance, transition, and closeout.
• Customer Outcomes & Trusted Advisory: Build durable relationships with federal customer stakeholders, clarify desired mission and business outcomes, and guide teams toward decisions that support those outcomes.
• Integrated Planning: Translate objectives and technical requirements into actionable work plans, milestones, staffing needs, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and measurable success indicators.
• Scope, Financials & Contracts: Manage engagement scope, schedule, budget, burn, deliverables, and contractual boundaries; surface variance early and lead change control when conditions shift.
• Risk, Issue & Dependency Management: Identify delivery and technical risks early, establish mitigation and contingency plans, remove blockers, and escalate with clear options and recommendations.
• Technical Alignment: Bridge mission and business requirements with technical solutions, facilitate engineering discussions, and help teams evaluate tradeoffs involving security, scalability, performance, and operational impact.
• Cross-Functional Orchestration: Coordinate Bluestaq engineers, product leaders, operations, contracts, customer teams, and external partners across concurrent workstreams to drive accountable execution.
• Governance & Communication: Establish a clear operating cadence and maintain concise status reporting, decision logs, risk and issue tracking, forecasts, and executive-level communications.
• Delivery Excellence & Growth Support: Uphold delivery quality, engagement security, documentation, and readiness standards; capture lessons learned; and, as needed, support business development and proposals with delivery strategies, work plans, staffing models, estimates, schedules, risks, and transition assumptions.

Required Qualifications and Skills

• Customer-Facing Delivery: Demonstrated success leading complex technical projects or programs for external customers through planning, execution, acceptance, and closeout.
• Program & Project Management: Ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams, integrated schedules, dependencies, resources, financials, and delivery commitments.
• Federal Mission Context: Experience working with U.S. federal customers or in similarly regulated, security-conscious environments with formal acquisition and governance expectations.
• Technical Fluency: Working knowledge of cloud services, data platforms, software delivery, and cybersecurity sufficient to facilitate technical discussions and validate alignment with customer outcomes.
• Communication: Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the judgment to communicate technical concepts, delivery health, risks, and tradeoffs to both executives and practitioners.
• Commercial & Contract Discipline: Experience contributing to proposals and statements of work and managing deliverables, acceptance criteria, budgets, forecasts, and change control within contractual boundaries.
• Delivery Methods & Tools: Proficiency with Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid delivery methods and common planning, collaboration, and reporting tools such as Jira, Confluence, or Microsoft Project.
• Leadership & Judgment: Ability to influence without direct authority, navigate ambiguity, resolve conflict, maintain accountability, and make sound decisions under pressure.
• Travel: Ability and willingness to travel up to 40%, including international travel, as needed to support customer engagements, delivery milestones, business development, and team alignment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Project management certification such as PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, SAFe, or PRINCE2.
• Cloud certification or practical experience delivering solutions on AWS or another major cloud platform.
• Professional services experience delivering cloud, data, software modernization, or mission-system engagements for federal customers.
• Experience supporting Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, or federal civilian mission environments.

Required Education and Experience

• Master's degree in Business, Program Management, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field and 3+ years of customer-facing technical program, project, or engagement management experience, OR
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Program Management, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field and 5+ years of customer-facing technical program, project, or engagement management experience, OR
• Associate degree in a related field and 7+ years of customer-facing technical program, project, or engagement management experience, OR
• High School Diploma/GED and 9+ years of customer-facing technical program, project, or engagement management experience.