Senior R&D Program Manager

About the role

The SaaS team is looking for a R&D Sr. Program Manager to lead the overall Customer Intelligence program, driving clarity, alignment, and predictable delivery across a complex, cross-functional SaaS environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end execution of the Customer Intelligence program, ensuring alignment across scope, priorities, dependencies, and delivery timelines.
• Serve as the central point of coordination across globally distributed engineering, product, and project teams, driving clarity and alignment in a dynamic SaaS environment.
• Proactively identify, manage, and communicate risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs to maintain the program momentum.
• Shape and maintain a clear program roadmap aligned to strategic business objectives.
• Own select features or technical initiatives end-to-end, coordinating across engineering, product, and project management teams to drive definition, delivery, and customer outcomes.
• Drive program transparency through structured reporting, dashboards, and communication that enable confident decision-making by leadership.
• Establish a consistent view of program health, including status, risks, dependency impacts, and delivery confidence.
• Translate complex program information into clear, actionable insights for both technical and executive audiences.
• Monitor overall program effectiveness and identify opportunities to improve processes, coordination, and delivery outcomes.
• Lead or recommend operational reviews and process improvements that increase predictability and reduce friction across teams.
• Build and communicate business cases for improvements, including cost/benefit analysis and expected impact.
• Influence decision-making at multiple levels of the organization, including senior leadership.
• Provide guidance and mentorship to project managers, helping improve consistency and execution quality across the program.
• Support program-level financial planning, including budget tracking, forecasting, and identifying trends and optimization opportunities.
• Ensure alignment between program execution, business objectives, and customer outcomes.
• Leverage Jira Cloud and advanced reporting capabilities to provide cross-program visibility and actionable insights.
• Continuously improve data quality and reporting practices to enable better program decisions.
• Identify and apply AI-driven capabilities to improve planning, risk detection, and overall program management effectiveness.

Requirements

• 8 years of experience in software program or project management, preferably in agile environments.
• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field, preferably in Computer Science or a related discipline.
• Proven experience delivering projects end-to-end across planning, execution, and delivery.
• Strong experience working in SaaS or continuous delivery environments.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including negotiation, communication, and conflict resolution.

Additional Competencies, Knowledge And Skills

• Communication - Conveying information and ideas clearly and concisely to individuals or groups in an engaging manner that helps them understand and retain the message; listening actively to others.
• Driving for Results - Setting high goals for personal and group accomplishment; using measurement methods to monitor progress toward goals; tenaciously working to meet or exceed goals while deriving satisfaction from that achievement and continuous improvement.
• Building Trusting Relationships - Using appropriate interpersonal styles to establish effective relationships with customers and internal partners; interacting with others in a way that promotes openness and trust and gives them confidence in one’s intentions.
• Strategic Planning - Obtaining information and identifying key issues and relationships relevant to achieving a long-range goal; committing to a course of action to accomplish a long-range goal after developing alternatives based on logical assumptions, facts, available resources, constraints, and organizational values.
• PMP, CSM or equivalent certifications.
• Ability to influence without authority.
• Ability to manage pressure, deadlines, and competing priorities.