Agile Technical Project Manager / Scrum Master

IBSS is seeking highly qualified candidates to potentially provide Agile program and project management services for NOAA’s Modeling Moonshot Initiative. The work supports multi-organization scientific R&D programs with substantial software components and is distinct from IT program management.

The multi-year NOAA Modeling Moonshot Initiative advances U.S. leadership in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) through GPU-accelerated modeling, continuous data assimilation (DA), AI-augmented ensemble prediction, and NOAA’s transition to the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) dynamical core.

Its Research-to-Operations (R2O) focus prioritizes moving advanced capabilities into NOAA’s operational forecast suite through coordination among NOAA offices, federal laboratories, and scientific partners.

The Moonshot encompasses four interconnected technical focus areas:

• MPAS integration into the Unified Forecast System (UFS) for the next-generation Global Forecast System (GFS).
• Continuous DA using a global km-scale Joint Effort for Data Assimilation Integration (JEDI)-MPAS system.
• GPU acceleration and UFS refactoring for advanced hardware, cloud, and high-performance computing.
• I for NWP (AI4NWP), including emulation, hybrid physics/AI models, and training datasets.

The services will operate across all four areas, providing WPO with program visibility, dependency and risk management, R2O tracking, deliverable coordination, and stakeholder engagement. Although not performing scientific or software development, personnel must understand NWP, scientific computing, and Agile development to engage technical staff and coordinate effectively.

Position summary

Provides Agile facilitation for AI4NWP teams and connects rapid experimentation to reproducible, secure, evidence-based operational acceptance. Maintains visibility across model/data versions, training and inference configurations, benchmarks, verification, risks, and fallback plans.

Roles and responsibilities

• Serve as Scrum Master/facilitator for assigned AI4NWP teams; coordinate planning, refinement, experiment reviews, retrospectives, and technical syncs.
• Maintain backlog and evidence records for training-data provenance, model/code version, features/architecture, reproducible training configuration, and inference environment.
• Track compute cost, latency, benchmark sets, verification thresholds, bias/failure-mode analysis, cybersecurity/supply-chain dependencies, and rollback or hybrid fallback.
• Help teams decompose research objectives into bounded experiments and integration increments with explicit hypotheses, datasets, acceptance evidence, and next decisions.
• Coordinate dependencies on EVS verification, HPC/GPU capacity, shared datasets, MPAS/UFS interfaces, operational windows, and model-governance decisions.
• Maintain and escalate impediments, risks, actions, and decisions; connect cross-team items to the Integration Forum and program roadmap.
• Prepare iteration summaries and progress inputs that differentiate experimental learning, integrated capability, readiness movement, and operational acceptance.
• Coach teams in MLOps/DevSecOps practices, versioning, peer review, automated tests, reproducible environments, monitoring, and configuration management.
• Provide surge support to other focus areas and contribute to common facilitation, KPI, retrospective, and process-improvement practices.

• BA/BS degree (or accepted equivalent), consistent with the Project Manager II labor category.
• 5-7 years of experience in the technical area being managed and 5+ years of IT management experience.
• Demonstrated ability to manage day-to-day engineering/data-science team activities and coordinate complex technical project work.
• Strong Agile facilitation, backlog/dependency management, risk escalation, reporting, coaching, and stakeholder-communication skills.
• Technical literacy sufficient to facilitate AI/ML lifecycle, MLOps, data provenance, verification, compute, and operationalization discussions., * Experience managing AI/ML weather-prediction, scientific ML, foundation-model, emulator, ensemble, or hybrid forecast-system development.
• Familiarity with AIGFS/AIGEFS/HGEFS, EVS, NWP verification, model governance, bias/failure analysis, and operational monitoring/rollback.
• CSM, PSM, SAFe Scrum Master, PMI-ACP, or comparable certification.
• Experience with MLOps/DevSecOps, GPU training/inference, data/model versioning, supply-chain controls, and reproducibility.
• Prior NOAA/OAR/NWS, Federal laboratory, or operational AI/ML program experience.

IBSS offers a competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage with a company-paid deductible, paid time off, federal holidays, a matching 401K plan, tuition/professional development reimbursement, and Flex-Spending (FSA)/Dependent Care Account (DCA) options.

Since 1992, IBSS, a woman-owned small business, has provided transformational consulting services to the Federal defense, civilian, and commercial sectors. Our services include cybersecurity and enterprise information technology, environmental science and engineering (including oceans, coasts, climate, and weather), and professional management services.

Our approach is to serve our employees by investing in their growth and development. As a result, our employees bring greater capabilities and provide exceptional service to our clients. In addition to creating career development opportunities for our employees, IBSS is passionate about giving back to the community and serving the environment. We strive to leave something better behind for the next generation.

We measure our success by the positive impact we have on our employees, clients, partners, and the communities we serve. Our tagline, Powered by Excellence, is a recognition of the employees that make up IBSS and ensures we deliver results with quality, applying industry best practices and certifications.