The Senior Technical Program Manager for Data Platforms & Operations will drive the planning, coordination, and delivery of complex initiatives across our cloud-based data platforms and their operations.

In this role the successful candidate will work closely with engineering managers, SRE/operations teams, and data/AI engineering teams who own the data products and data services which rely on the efficient running and delivery of data platforms. Your role is to:

• Coordinate cross-team work so platform and operational changes land predictably and safely.
• Structure delivery (roadmaps, plans, dependencies, risks) for data platform programs.
• Improve operational performance by assisting engineering managers, ensuring metrics and runbooks are part of the delivery process.
• Provide transparency to leadership via clear, metric-led reporting on status, risk, and outcomes.

This is a senior individual contributor role suited to someone who is highly organised, data-driven, and comfortable working with technical stakeholders across a varied data ecosystem. 

Key Responsibilities

Program & Delivery Management

• Plan and run cross-platform programs for data platform and operational initiatives (e.g. major upgrades, reliability improvements, cost optimisation, new platform capabilities).
• Build and maintain integrated program plans (scope, milestones, dependencies, risks, decision points) across multiple engineering and operations teams.
• Facilitate regular delivery cadences (stand-ups, status reviews) with engineering managers and leads; ensure actions are owned and tracked to completion.
• Ensure that program objectives are clearly defined, measurable, and aligned with business outcomes, such as:
  • Improved platform availability and reliability.
  • Reduced incident frequency and MTTR targets.
  • Improved data freshness, latency, and throughput for key workloads.

Operational Coordination & Readiness

• Partner with engineering managers, SREs, and operations teams to assist them in coordinating operational activities are delivered by data platform teams:
  • Change calendars, release planning, and operational readiness reviews.
  • Operational playbooks and runbook readiness for new features or platform changes.
  • Coordinated communication during planned maintenance and impactful changes.
• Align with service owners (engineering managers) on operational priorities and schedules, helping sequence work in a way that balances reliability, feature delivery, and cost.

Measurement, Metrics & Reporting

• Work with engineering managers and service owners to ensure platform and operational KPIs, are part of the end delivery:
  • SLA/SLO/SLI for data platforms and pipelines (e.g. uptime, data freshness, query performance).
  • Operational metrics such as incident rate, MTTR, change success rate, and capacity utilisation.
• Ensure consistent measurement and reporting of delivery metrics across programs and operational areas:
  • Curate and maintain dashboards and status reports for leadership.
  • Highlight trends, risks, and trade-offs in a clear and concise way.
• Use analytics to prioritise improvements, identify systemic issues, and quantify impact of program work.

Cross-Team Alignment & Communication

• Facilitate coordination across:
  • Data platform engineering (cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, data platform services).
  • Data engineering and ETL/ELT teams.
  • AI/ML engineering teams consuming data platform capabilities.
  • Operations, SRE, and service desk teams.
• Align teams on priorities, sequencing, and dependencies for shared initiatives, ensuring upstream and downstream impacts are understood.
• Communicate program status to stakeholders at multiple levels:
  • Concise executive summaries of progress, risk, and impact.
  • Detailed views for engineering teams on dependencies, decisions, and next steps.

Continuous Improvement & Governance

• Support governance initiatives for data platforms are part of the delivery process:
  • - Align teams on documenting and delivering templates/checklists for change reviews, and operational readiness.
• Promote continuous improvement initiatives focused on:
  • Increasing automation in operations and delivery processes.
  • Reducing toil and manual coordination where possible.
  • Strengthening platform resilience and reducing operational risk.
• Capture and socialise lessons learned across programs to improve future planning, estimation, and operational practices.

Experience required 

• Technical Program / Project Management
  • Significant experience (typically 7+ years) in technical program management or project management in a software, data, or cloud engineering context.
  • Proven track record of driving cross-team programs from planning through delivery, with demonstrable impact on reliability, performance, or efficiency.
• Operational & Reliability Focus
  • Experience working closely with operations, SRE, or platform teams on production services.
• Delivery Excellence
  • Strong skills in planning, dependency management, and risk management across multiple teams.
  • Comfortable operating in an agile environment, coordinating between different teams and methodologies.
  • Able to break down ambiguous objectives into clear, sequenced workstreams.
• Communication & Stakeholder Management
  • Excellent written and verbal communication; able to tailor information for engineers, managers, and senior leaders.
  • Effective at influencing without authority, building trust with engineering managers and cross-functional partners.
  • Comfortable facilitating workshops, retrospectives, and decision-making forums.
• Tools & Ways of Working
  • Proficient with tools such as JIRA, Confluence, and similar project tracking and documentation systems.

Experience (desirable)

• Cloud & Data Platform Familiarity
• • Working familiarity (conceptual and conversational) with AWS cloud services, Snowflake or similar cloud data warehouses, Kubernetes, and ETL/ELT data pipelines.
  • Some awareness of ITIL best practices for service management
  • Able to understand and discuss system architectures, operational constraints, and trade-offs with technical leads (you’re not expected to write production code).
• Operational & Reliability Focus
  • Strong understanding of SLA, SLO, and SLI concepts and how they relate to reliability, customer experience, and business value.
  • Experience in incident management, post-incident reviews, and operational readiness.
• Tools & Ways of Working
  • Familiar with dashboards and monitoring tools (e.g., DataDog, CloudWatch, Grafana) from a program/metrics perspective.
  • Experience working globally with a variety of cultures including Japan, India, Ireland and the U.S.

• Qualifications

• • A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field; or equivalent practical experience.
  • Advanced degrees (e.g., MS, MBA) are a plus but not required.
  • Industry certifications (e.g. AWS, PMP, Agile/PMI-ACP) are beneficial but not required.