[Confluent] Senior Technical Program Manager

About the role

As a Senior Technical Program Manager (TPM), your day-to-day involves juggling multiple AI initiatives across numerous teams, stakeholder functions (Product, Security, Engineering leadership, etc.), and geographies. You will drive planning, prioritization, risk management, stakeholder reporting, operations, and tradeoffs — often at the intersection of fast-moving AI/ML capabilities and Confluent's core streaming platform. A cross-org view is particularly strategic here, as you'll manage horizontal, multi-quarter programs spanning AI core features and platform reliability/security initiatives.

Programs you own may span complex technical projects involving model inference performance and scalability, multi-region DR, streaming agent orchestration, and emerging AI protocol adoption. A strong foundation in cloud fundamentals — and working fluency in AI/ML system concepts — is necessary to deep-dive into technical areas and support these programs successfully. You will shield development teams from chaos and streamline processes for smooth, on-schedule delivery of long-ranging programs.

Responsibilities

• Work with stakeholders to drive cross-cutting and critical initiatives for the company.
• Ensure projects are delivered on time, regularly communicating progress and status to key stakeholders.
• Proactively identify and resolve roadblocks/challenges affecting projects, making technical decisions to keep projects running smoothly.
• Work with Engineering, Product, and Security leadership to streamline and drive projects on a predictable schedule.
• Run cross-functional meetings and drive decision-making around schedule adjustments, bug triage, and internal and external partner/customer delivery.
• Take ownership of engaging with various engineering and product stakeholders to drive end-to-end execution, including understanding potential risks and alignment models for competing priorities.
• Help the Streaming AI team understand the priorities of other dependent teams, both upstream and downstream, to unblock their roadmap needs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Master's Degree preferred.
• Minimum of 4 years of TPM experience driving the end-to-end lifecycle of complex and large-scale projects across organizations.

Skills

• Strong technical skills, especially knowledge of cloud networking fundamentals; working familiarity with AI/ML system concepts is a strong plus.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to use data to glean insights and trends, helping engineering make better decisions.
• Experience driving cloud platform engineering cross-functional projects; experience with AI/ML platform or infrastructure programs is a big plus.
• Experience driving operations across teams, creating dashboards is also a plus.
• Experience with JIRA, BigQuery, Google App Scripts.
• Strong communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills to work with engineering and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience in highly agile environments applying JIRA reporting and sprint planning is a plus.
• Experience with designing, developing, and delivering software solutions using leading-edge technologies, including back-end and front-end development, and DevOps engineering.
• Experience working in an Agile environment, collaborating with stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver high-quality software solutions.
• Experience contributing to automated CI/CD pipelines, ensuring seamless integration and delivery of software solutions.

Who you are

• Smart, humble, and empathetic.
• Strong sense of teamwork, putting the team's and company's interests first.
• Driven and excited about the challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software environment with a mindset of getting things done.