Michael Reda, Project Manager in Colorado Springs, CO, United States
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Michael Reda

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Location
Colorado Springs, CO, United States
Toptal Member Since
April 9, 2021

Michael has extensive experience in engineering, with a consistent thread of engineering project leadership in a variety of industries. He excels at organizing tasks and resources to deliver consistent and high-quality results. Michael enjoys leading teams and projects and driving customer satisfaction on a daily basis.

Project Highlights

Program Financial Manager
Created resource allocation and financial tracking tools, from input to dashboards, for a technology modernization program at a mid-sized software company.
Next Generation Product Development
Brought a next-gen product to market, managing the project from concept to production release.
Business Intelligence Project Champion
Responsible for ensuring the success of a project to deliver an enterprise business intelligence tool.

Expertise

Work Experience

Director of Program Management

2019 - 2020
Quantum Imaging
  • Drove a critical customer program from development to production, managing customer requirements, product validation, and documentation release while working on the delivery schedule to meet customer expectations.
  • Developed project reporting tools to bring increased visibility to product status through dashboards highlighting key metrics.
  • Introduced project management principles to an engineering organization, beginning culture shift towards more structured task management, reducing waste, and improving the ability to forecast loading and project completion.

Director of Systems Engineering

2013 - 2019
Vnomics
  • Acted as a project manager for implementation of new government-mandated capabilities, deriving technical requirements from government documentation, building project plan, and monitoring execution, finishing the project on time and budget.
  • Collaborated with the product management team to extract core value from product offering and deliver it to new customers in next-generation products. Helped develop new firmware, back-end infrastructure, user portal, and hardware.
  • Improved the perception of the engineering team company-wide by turning around the track record of missing requirements and long-running projects and improving requirement documentation, project monitoring and control, and communication.

Principal Systems Engineer

2005 - 2013
Harris Corporation
  • Drove process improvement effort resulting in CMMI Level 3 certification, working with internal audit to review required documentation and artifacts to increase competitiveness and position department for ongoing success.
  • Acted as a project manager on multiple projects for international defense customers, from requirements development to in-country commissioning, overseeing schedule and budget.
  • Worked closely with the customers and sales team to develop system requirements and manage engineering proposal activity for new opportunities. Lived and worked as an expat at an overseas office.

Program Financial Manager

Created resource allocation and financial tracking tools, from input to dashboards, for a technology modernization program at a mid-sized software company.

Designed and implemented a set of tools to track resource allocation and associated costs across multiple projects within a technology modernization program. Created processes to ensure consistent information gathering and worked closely with project managers to maintain accurate records. Developed budget tracking and forecasting reports and dashboards to share financial status with program leadership and accounting teams. Ultimately received buy-in and acceptance of these processes and tools, enabling the program team to use information from them for resource planning.

Next Generation Product Development

Brought a next-gen product to market, managing the project from concept to production release.

Collaborated closely with the customers and product management to develop use cases and user story maps for new product development, leveraging the company's existing value proposition in an improved, more focused offering. Worked with engineering to build epics and user stories for a scope that included updated firmware, back-end infrastructure, and customer portal, with a roadmap that went from MVP to fully featured offering. Evaluated multiple hardware partners and selected top option, bringing hardware to market in parallel with internal development. Tracked project execution against the plan, ensuring visibility and clear communication with stakeholders. The project was completed on time and budget, with installations taking place at launch customers within the originally targeted timeframe.

ELD Implementation

Acted as a project manager for implementation of the new FMCSA ELD regulations for commercial driver hours-of-service tracking.

Developed a project plan to bring the legacy system up to date when new federally mandated regulations were passed down from the FMCSA. Created timeline and resource loading requirements to develop new product build, deploy to test customers, validate capabilities, and formally release before the mandated timeline. Collaborated closely with the product development team and product management to develop key milestones, monitor work against those milestones, and report status, ensuring high confidence in the development team. Ultimately, the team met all milestones and completed work within the planned budget. Validation at customer fleets was successful.

Deployable Communications Systems

Designed and built deployable, self-contained communication systems for remote FOBs, including ground communications, backhaul, backup power, and solar for multi-year, multi-phase contracts.

I managed technical teams and subcontractors to deliver a communications system that covered dozens of sites for remote locations with limited existing infrastructure. Systems were rapidly deployable and could operate as standalone systems, including ground communications for regional use, local area network, and backhaul to reach centrally located fixed sites. Sites could run off of primary power and backup power with battery banks, gen-sets, and deployable solar arrays.

I also developed a modular system that enabled follow-on phases to be delivered using a build-to-print approach using the same base modules, allowing quick delivery for future orders with minimal customization.

Business Intelligence Project Champion

Responsible for ensuring the success of a project to deliver an enterprise business intelligence tool.

Coordinated daily activities with the team responsible for delivering enterprise business intelligence tools, ensuring end user needs were met. This included establishing customer outreach cadence and content, evaluating user onboarding and training needs on an ongoing basis, maintaining appropriate licensing for applications and add-ons with proper funding, and ensuring project sponsors and other key stakeholders were kept informed and concerns were addressed.
2006 - 2008

Master's Degree in Systems Engineering

Florida Institute of Technology - Melbourne, FL

1998 - 2002

Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering Technology

Rochester Institute of Technology - Rochester, NY

OCTOBER 2013 - NOVEMBER 2025

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

Collaboration That Works

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