Principal Technical Program Manager, Engineering
*This opportunity is not open to third-party agencies or C2C candidates. Candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S. without current or future visa sponsorship.
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA (Hybrid)
Schedule: 3 Days Onsite Per Week
About the Opportunity
Join a leading financial technology organization that powers secure digital payments and trusted financial experiences for millions of consumers and businesses. As a Principal Technical Program Manager, Engineering, you will lead large-scale, high-impact technology initiatives that shape the future of digital payments and financial services.
This is the highest individual contributor program management level within the organization, offering significant visibility and influence across engineering, product, architecture, and executive leadership teams.
Position Summary
The Principal Technical Program Manager will drive complex, cross-functional programs from strategy through delivery. You will partner with engineering leaders, architects, and product teams to deliver scalable, secure, and customer-focused solutions while aligning stakeholders around business and technical objectives.
This role requires strong technical depth, executive presence, and the ability to lead through influence in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead complex, enterprise-scale technical programs across engineering, product, and business teams.
- Own program strategy, planning, execution, governance, risks, and delivery.
- Partner with architects and engineering leaders to drive technical solutions and evaluate system design tradeoffs.
- Facilitate architecture reviews and cross-functional decision-making.
- Drive product, platform, and application launches from concept through deployment.
- Manage dependencies, risks, timelines, resources, and stakeholder communications.
- Present program updates and recommendations to senior leadership and executive audiences.
- Ensure compliance with security, audit, risk, and governance requirements.
- Champion operational excellence and continuous improvement across the engineering organization.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor''s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field.
- 15+ years of technical program management experience within software development or engineering organizations.
- Experience operating at the Principal, Lead, Staff+, or Director-equivalent individual contributor level.
- Proven success leading large-scale programs involving multiple engineering teams and executive stakeholders.
- Strong understanding of software development lifecycles, modern architectures, and engineering best practices.
- Exceptional written, verbal, and executive communication skills.
- Demonstrated ability to influence without direct authority and drive alignment across organizations.
Technical Expectations
While coding is not required, candidates must be able to:
- Participate in architecture review discussions.
- Evaluate technical tradeoffs and system design decisions.
- Understand distributed systems, APIs, cloud architectures, databases, scalability, resiliency, and performance concepts.
- Partner effectively with engineers, architects, and engineering leadership.
Preferred Technical Experience
- AWS cloud technologies
- Microservices and distributed systems
- Enterprise-scale platforms
- API ecosystems
- High-volume consumer applications
Preferred Experience
- Fintech, payments, e-commerce, consumer technology, marketplace, or enterprise software environments.
- Customer-facing product launches or large-scale application delivery.
- Highly regulated industries.
- Agile, Scrum, PMP, PgMP, SAFe, Lean Six Sigma, or related certifications.
What Makes a Strong Candidate
- Proven ownership of major product, platform, or technology launches.
- Strong executive presence and concise communication style.
- Ability to navigate ambiguity and lead complex initiatives independently.
- Experience partnering directly with engineering directors, architects, product leaders, and executives.
- Technical credibility coupled with exceptional business and stakeholder management skills.
Why Join Us
This is an opportunity to influence one of the largest digital payment ecosystems in the United States while working alongside senior engineering and product leaders. You''ll lead strategic initiatives, shape technology delivery at scale, and make a meaningful impact on products used by millions of consumers and businesses.
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