Program Manager - Data Engineering

Program Manager – Data Engineering

As a Technical Program Manager, you'll work with stakeholders across the Data & Analytics organization and the broader business to drive a large-scale data platform migration from scoping and planning through completion. This program is consolidating legacy, ungoverned data environments into a single, modern, well governed data platform, and spans multiple engineering teams and workstreams delivered in parallel. You'll bring structure and transparency to a program that today runs on top of engineering leadership's technical workload. You'll own the coordination layer end-to end so technical leaders can stay focused on execution, and you'll need to provide diplomatic, timely communication across teams operating in an agile environment with iterative planning and delivery cycles.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and maintain the program roadmap, drive milestones, identify and escalate cross-team dependencies, and manage the full program lifecycle from definition through close.


• Collaborate with multiple engineering and data teams to sequence work, track delivery against a phased migration plan, and drive execution of the roadmap across concept, development, and rollout.


• Enable effective communication and transparency between the program team, stakeholders, and leadership. Consolidate status reporting across workstreams and synthesize risks, issues, and dependencies, along with solution recommendations, for executive consumption.


• Organize and maintain a centralized repository of program and project information, including roadmaps, decisions, and status.


• Hold cross-functional teams accountable through influence. Resolve conflict through arbitration, negotiation, reasoned discussion, or escalation as needed.


• Maintain a program-level risk and issue log, proactively identify risks to ontime delivery, and drive mitigation plans before they affect the broader program.


• Streamline processes, simplify execution, and track progress against program goals and success criteria.

Partner Closely With

• Data Product and Engineering leadership to understand upcoming priorities and sequence workstreams accordingly.


• Engineering teams to understand technical dependencies, architecture decisions, and delivery constraints that affect the migration timeline.


• Data Governance to align on ownership, lineage, and quality standards for the newly consolidated platform as legacy systems are retired.


• Analytics team to understand reporting and consumption needs, ensuring migrated data models support existing dashboards and downstream analytics without disruption.


• Align with stakeholders across the business on cross-team dependencies, expectations, and issue resolution as legacy systems are retired and new data sources come online.


• Develop a working understanding of the software development lifecycle used by the data engineering teams, including the ability to proactively manage and mitigate risks to on-time delivery, define cut-over plans, and support teams in applying consistent agile practices.


• Lead change management efforts across affected teams, ensuring stakeholders are informed of upcoming schema, process, or workflow changes as legacy systems are retired and new data sources come online.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of program or project management experience, including experience managing complex technical initiatives involving multiple systems, integrations, or data platforms.


• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Management, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.


• Experience managing programs delivered by distributed, cross-functional teams without direct reporting authority.


• Working knowledge of modern data platform concepts (such as cloud data warehousing and data transformation tools, including dbt), sufficient to engage credibly with data engineers on scope, dependencies, and architecture.


• Understanding of agile methodologies, metrics, and reporting techniques, with experience working across multiple teams or workstreams.


• Strong written and verbal communication skills, and comfort presenting to both large and small groups, including executive audiences.


• Prior contract or consulting experience delivering a defined, time-boxed program is strongly preferred.

What You'll Need To Succeed

• Proven ability to build trust and drive alignment across multiple engineering and business teams without formal authority.


• Comfort operating in ambiguity, including establishing a program's roadmap, cadence, and reporting structure from the ground up.


• Strong facilitation skills, able to keep cross-functional meetings focused and drive decisions to closure rather than just tracking status.


• Ability to engage credibly with engineers on technical scope and risk, then translate that into clear, business-relevant language for executive audiences.


• A bias toward action and pragmatism, balancing process rigor with the need to keep delivery moving.


• Track record of earning trust with skeptical or change-resistant stakeholders during a large-scale system transition or platform migration.


• Strong documentation habits and the discipline to maintain a consistent, transparent reporting rhythm across a multi-team program.


• A data-driven mindset, with experience defining and tracking KPIs or OKRs to measure program health and progress.


• Excellent problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to get ahead of risks before they affect delivery.


• Resilience and follow-through on a long-running program where priorities and dependencies shift over time.


• Comfort holding teams accountable to commitments through influence rather than authority.

Desired Qualifications

• PMP, CSM, SAFe, or equivalent project or agile certification.


• Experience with tools such as Jira, Confluence, Smartsheets, or similar program and project planning and tracking platforms.


• Prior experience in a data engineering, analytics, or technical product role.


• Experience supporting a legacy system retirement or platform migration initiative.

Compensation: $60 - $80 per hour

ID: 161