Vice President, Product and Technology Operations

About the role

FICO is seeking a Vice President of Technology Operations to lead the operational strategy and execution for the company's technology functions. This role requires extensive senior leadership experience in product or engineering operations, product management, or a related function within a software or SaaS organization.

Responsibilities

• Set the strategy and execution model for Technology Operations, driving adoption of standards and operating practices across product and engineering functions.
• Establish and maintain the operating rhythm, cadence, and governance that keeps product, engineering, cloud engineering, and architecture aligned and moving.
• Represent operational risk and delivery confidence to senior leadership, ensuring strategic priorities are translated into disciplined, measurable execution.
• Lead end-to-end product lifecycle management including NPI, EOL, and PDLC governance across the technology organization.
• Drive engineering capacity planning, resource management, delivery risk visibility, and cross-team dependency resolution.
• Oversee roadmap intake, confidence reporting, and trade-off decision support to enable informed executive decision-making.
• Own Release Management by defining release content and business value and governing whether a release is fit and approved for General Availability.
• Maintain architecture governance, decision records, and technical risk assessment across major platform initiatives.
• Partner with Security and Compliance teams to ensure release governance and architecture decisions reflect FICO's regulatory and risk obligations.
• Lead operationalization of strategic initiatives from General Availability through scaled customer adoption.
• Drive customer migration planning, sequencing, and value realization for the most strategic accounts.
• Oversee process and workflow optimization across technology teams to accelerate delivery and improve outcomes.
• Build and maintain insights, dashboards, and executive decision-support narratives that drive accountability and action in partnership with the Software Insights team.
• Manage the product execution environment across Aha, Jira, GitHub, and the Product Database, ensuring standards, governance, and data integrity.
• Define and track metrics that enable speed and confidence across all operational functions.
• Recruit, develop, and retain a high-performing team of technical operations leaders and specialists with clear career paths and accountability.
• Build a culture of psychological safety, continuous improvement, and operational excellence across all functions.
• Partner closely with leaders across Product, Engineering, Architecture, and Global PMO to ensure seamless cross-functional collaboration.

Qualifications

This role requires extensive senior leadership experience in product or engineering operations, product management, or a related function within a software or SaaS organization. Proven track record of building operational functions from the ground up and driving cross-functional alignment in complex, matrixed environments is essential. Deep understanding of the software development lifecycle with ability to use tooling and data to drive visibility and accountability is also required. Proficiency with product and engineering platforms such as Aha, Jira, and GitHub, with experience maintaining governance and data integrity, is necessary. Demonstrated ability to translate strategic priorities into disciplined, measurable execution across large-scale engineering and product organizations is key. Exceptional ability to operate in matrixed structures where influence is earned through partnership rather than authority is crucial. Clear and confident communication skills, coupled with proven ability to craft compelling executive narratives that drive accountability and action across senior leadership teams, are expected. Experience defining clear career paths and developing the next generation of operational and technical leaders is vital. Familiarity with AI-assisted development practices and developer productivity tooling as a means to accelerate engineering velocity is beneficial. Experience in regulated industries, particularly financial services, with understanding of compliance and risk obligations, is preferred.

Benefits

FICO offers highly competitive compensation, benefits and rewards programs that encourage employees to bring their best every day and be recognized for doing so. The targeted base pay range for this role is $196,000 to $308,000, reflecting differences in candidate knowledge, skills and experience. FICO promotes a culture of inclusion and seeks to attract a diverse set of candidates for each job opportunity. We are an equal employment opportunity employer and we’re proud to offer employment and advancement opportunities to all candidates without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.