Job Description

Technical Project Manager – Synthetic Data

About the team & product:

The Synthetic Data Research team is building Ipsos’ next-generation platform for synthetic data and generative AI, turning cutting-edge methods into practical tools that can be used safely and confidently across the business.

We focus on two core products:

• Data Augmentation Workbench: a self-serve internal platform that enables teams to train models and generate synthetic data through secure APIs and streamlined workflows, with evaluation and governance built in from day one.
• Digital Twins: agentic, respondent-grounded LLM “synthetic panellists” designed to simulate behaviours and survey responses, supported by rigorous validation, privacy safeguards, and strong auditability.

Our work sits at the intersection of software engineering, machine learning, privacy, and market research methodology We collaborate with leading academic institutions (including Stanford University) to ensure our approach is scientifically robust while remaining focused on real-world impact.

Ultimately, our goal is to deliver data collection efficiencies, new product innovation, and defensible scientific frameworks that can scale to thousands of colleagues and clients. We’re a cross-disciplinary group, bringing together market researchers, mathematicians, computer scientists, data scientists, and data engineers, to build capabilities that shape how insights are created in the future.

How you’ll make an impact:

You’ll be the delivery backbone for a fast-moving, cross-functional engineering + ML team, making sure work is well-shaped, visible, and consistently shipped. You’ll bring disciplined agile execution (without heavy bureaucracy), so the team can run reliable two-week sprints, reduce delivery risk, and keep stakeholders aligned across product, research, privacy, and security.

In practice, you will:

• Turn strategy and research goals into a clear, prioritised Jira backlog with well-defined epics, stories, acceptance criteria, and dependencies.
• Run a predictable sprint cadence (planning → daily flow → review → retro) that improves throughput and reduces churn.
• Improve “how we work” through retrospectives and continuous process tuning, better estimation, fewer blockers, cleaner handoffs, clearer definitions of done.
• Ensure delivery is transparent: stakeholders always know what’s shipping, what’s at risk, and what decisions are needed.

Tech stack & ecosystem:

• Jira for backlog management, sprint boards, ticket hygiene, dashboards, and reporting
• Confluence for living documentation: PRDs/tech notes, decision logs, runbooks, RAID logs
• Mural for discovery workshops, story mapping, planning sessions, and retrospectives
• Two-week sprints, with lightweight ceremonies and measurable sprint goals
• Ticketing discipline: Definition of Ready/Done, acceptance criteria, and clear ownership

What you’ll do:

• Own the agile delivery cadence for one or both workstreams (Workbench and/or Digital Twins).
• Facilitate core ceremonies:
• Backlog refinement / grooming
• Sprint planning (capacity, commitment, sprint goal)
• Daily stand-ups (focused on flow and blockers)
• Sprint review / demo (outcomes, not activity)
• Retrospectives (actionable improvements tracked to completion)
• Maintain a high-quality Jira backlog
• structure epics/stories, manage dependencies, keep ticket scopes right-sized
• enforce strong templates: user story format, acceptance criteria, test notes, links to designs/docs
• drive ticket hygiene (statuses, ownership, SLAs for reviews, definition of done)
• Create delivery transparency:
• Jira dashboards for velocity, cycle time, throughput, and WIP
• release notes and sprint summaries in Confluence
• RAID tracking (risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies) with clear mitigation owners
• Coordinate cross-functional delivery with Product, Engineering, DS/ML, Research Methodology, Security, and Privacy:
• ensure required reviews are built into the workflow (e.g., data governance checks, security approvals)
• manage external dependencies (data availability, platform infra, access approvals)
• Support release management:
• cut plans, go/no-go readiness checks, rollout comms, post-release retros/postmortems as needed
• Improve operational maturity:
• standardise templates, workflows, and definitions
• reduce lead time from “idea” to “shipped”
• help the team use Confluence as the system of record (decisions, requirements, runbooks)

What you’ll need:

• Strong experience as a TPM/Delivery Lead/Scrum Master in a technical environment (platforms, APIs, data/ML engineering strongly preferred).
• Deep hands-on capability with Jira and Confluence (you can build workflows, dashboards, and a sane project structure).
• Proven experience running two-week sprint cadences with measurable outcomes and continuous improvement via retros.
• Excellent stakeholder management, able to align research, product, and engineering, and keep decisions moving.
• Ability to communicate clearly across technical and non-technical groups; strong written documentation habits.
• Nice-to-have: experience delivering ML/LLM products, data governance/privacy workflows, or internal developer platforms.

Benefits:

We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support you as an individual. Our standard benefits include 25 days annual leave, pension contribution, income protection and life assurance. In addition, there are a range health & wellbeing, financial benefits and professional development opportunities.

We have a hybrid approach to work and ask people to be in the office or with clients for 3 days per week. We appreciate you may have commitments outside of work and will consider flexible working applications - please highlight what you are looking for when you make your application.

We are committed to equality, treating people fairly, promoting a positive and inclusive working environment and ensuring we have diversity of people and views. We recognise that this is important for our business success - a more diverse workforce will enable us to better reflect and understand the world we research and ultimately deliver better research and insight to our clients. We are proud to be a member of the Disability Confident scheme, certified as a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer. We provide an inclusive and accessible recruitment process.

Your application will be reviewed by someone from our Talent Team who will be in touch either way to let you know the outcome.

Ready to have an impact? Apply now!

Ipsos is one of the world’s largest research companies and currently the only one primarily managed by researchers, ranking as a #1 full-service research organization for four consecutive years. With over 75 different data-driven solutions, and presence in 90 markets, Ipsos brings together research, implementation, methodological, and subject-matter experts from around the world, combining thematic and technical experts to deliver top-quality research and insights. Simply speaking, we help the biggest companies solve some of their biggest problems, serving more than 5000 clients across the globe by providing research, data, and insights on their target markets. And we are proud of our continuous efforts in making Ipsos the best place to work!