Senior Program Manager - M&A
Location: Santa Clara, CA (On-site) Local to CA
Experience Required: 10+ years
Job Description
Key Responsibilities
Program Leadership and Delivery
Lead end-to-end delivery of large-scale infrastructure, operations, Finance technology, and Lead to Cash business application programs, from planning through implementation and stabilization.
Manage initiatives spanning servers, cloud, networking, storage, virtualization, databases, endpoint management, data center technologies, and financial and commercial systems.
Support modernization efforts including cloud migration, automation, disaster recovery, and platform upgrades.
Lead multiple large-scale programs concurrently, ensuring scope, schedule, budget, and quality objectives are met.
Agile and SAFe Delivery
Establish and maintain Sprint and Program Increment (PI) calendars and communicate key milestones.
Facilitate and drive Agile ceremonies, including Feature Planning, PI Planning, Release Commit, Sprint Planning, Sprint Demos, Retrospectives, Go-Live activities, and Release Readiness Reviews.
Champion Agile principles, empowering teams to continuously improve processes and fostering a transparent, collaborative working environment.
Apply Scrum, SAFe, Waterfall, or hybrid methodologies as appropriate, with a focus on delivery speed and program flexibility, including across distributed teams.
PMO Governance and Operating Model
Establish and manage program governance, operating models, project standards, milestones, and reporting mechanisms.
Develop and maintain integrated program plans, dependencies, critical paths, resource plans, and delivery roadmaps.
Establish effective RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) management and ensure timely resolution of critical items.
Facilitate steering committees and executive governance forums, ensuring clear decisions, actions, and accountability.
Drive continuous improvement of PMO processes, tools, standards, and governance practices.
ServiceNow, ITSM, and Release Management
Use ServiceNow for project tracking and ITSM processes, including Change, Incident, Problem, Asset Management, and CMDB.
Coordinate infrastructure and release changes through CAB, ensuring adherence to ITIL best practices.
Support release and change management activities, ensuring smooth go-lives and successful user adoption of delivered solutions.
Build executive dashboards that give leadership real-time visibility into program health.
Financial and Vendor Management
Manage program financials, including budgets, forecasts, resource costs, vendor spend, and variance analysis.
Manage vendor relationships, system integrators, and consulting partners, including procurement activities and contract deliverables.
Stakeholder Engagement and Change Management
Build and maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders across Finance, Accounting, FP&A, Treasury, Procurement, Sales, IT, Infrastructure, Security, Application, Cloud, Data, and business teams.
Proactively address stakeholder concerns and communicate program progress, risks, and mitigation strategies in a timely manner.
Provide executive-level reporting on status, risks, issues, dependencies, financials, and key decisions.
Ensure change management, communication, training, and organizational readiness are built into every program.
Metrics and Compliance
Establish KPIs to measure program health, delivery performance, benefits realization, and business outcomes.
Identify delivery risks early and develop mitigation and contingency plans.
Ensure compliance with organizational policies, security, audit, regulatory, and Finance governance requirements.
M&A Requirements
Lead M&A integration programs from pre-close planning through Day 1 readiness and post-merger stabilization, including Day 1 / Day 100 roadmaps and synergy tracking.
Coordinate system, data, and ERP / Lead to Cash integration, including application rationalization and onboarding acquired environments into ServiceNow (ITSM, CMDB).
Partner with Corporate Development, Legal, Finance, and the IMO on due diligence findings, TSAs, integration budgets, and compliance (including SOX).
Drive change management, communications, and readiness for acquired and acquiring teams; report integration KPIs and synergy realization to executives.
M&A Preferred Qualifications
Buy-side and sell-side experience, including carve-outs and separations.
Experience with synergy tracking tools, IMO frameworks, and SOX or purchase accounting impacts on systems.
PMP, PgMP, or an M&A integration credential; MBA or advanced degree in Finance or Business Administration.
Required Skills
Extensive experience implementing Agile methodologies, particularly Scrum and SAFe, and facilitating Agile ceremonies across distributed teams.
Proven experience as a Program Manager for Lead to Cash business applications, Finance transformation, or enterprise IT programs.
Strong experience managing cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders.
Expertise in risk assessment, mitigation, and proactive management of program risks and issues.
Excellent stakeholder management, decision-making, and negotiation skills, particularly with complex requirements and expectations.
Strong problem-solving, conflict resolution, and interpersonal communication skills.
Hands-on knowledge of Agile and program management tools.
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field.
12+ years of experience in program or project management, PMO leadership, IT infrastructure operations, or Finance transformation.
5+ years leading large, complex, cross-functional enterprise programs, including at least 2 years managing large IT programs with Agile methodology.
3+ years of hands-on experience managing ServiceNow-based initiatives (ITSM, Change, CMDB, Asset Management).
Strong understanding of IT infrastructure, including cloud, networking, storage, virtualization, and data center environments.
Working knowledge of Finance and Lead to Cash processes such as General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Financial Close, FP&A, Revenue, Order Management, Billing, Procurement, and Management Reporting.
Proven track record of leading successful programs using Agile and SAFe methodologies.
Excellent leadership, communication, and executive stakeholder management skills.
Strong governance, financial management, and risk management skills.
M&A Required Qualifications
5+ years in M&A integration, post-merger integration, or carve-out program management.
Led at least two full integration or separation programs through Day 1 and post-close stabilization.
Experience integrating Finance and Lead to Cash systems (GL, AP/AR, billing, revenue) and managing TSAs, vendor transitions, and integration budgets.
Proven ability to work with executive sponsors and deal teams under compressed timelines and confidentiality constraints.
Certification
Required: Certified SAFe Agilist, or Scrum Master.
Preferred: PMP, PgMP, ITIL 4, or ServiceNow certifications.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with ERP, CPQ, or financial system implementations (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Workday).
BS, MBA or other advanced degree.
