Description
At Zendesk, we are passionate about building software that delivers the ultimate customer experience. Your favourite brands maximise our products to engage you as a customer, and we lead the industry with beautifully simple software.
As a Senior Technical Program Manager (TPM) within Product Development, you will lead multiple complex, cross-functional technical programs that deliver measurable business outcomes and directly support functional level OKRs. You operate with a deep end-to-end view of value creation across Zendesk, proactively identifying cross-functional friction and dependencies before they surface as delivery risks.
Responsibilities
- Lead multiple concurrent, technical programs across Product Development and key partner functions, ensuring end-to-end delivery against milestones, outcomes, and quality bars.
- Drive OKR delivery: partner closely with KR owners and reporters to develop and drive the narrative, tie supporting programs into a cohesive story, and ensure progress is measurable and visible.
- Identify cross-functional dependencies and friction points early; design execution plans that account for end-to-end impacts across Zendesk and reduce delivery risk.
- Own program governance: establish decision-making forums, operating rhythms, and escalation paths; keep senior leaders informed with clear asks, options, and tradeoffs.
- Apply exceptional execution discipline: manage scope, critical path, risks, and change control to limit surprises; ensure mitigations are in place before issues become delivery blockers.
- Facilitate complex alignment and decision-making: guide groups through ambiguity using skilled facilitation, influence, and negotiation to drive clear outcomes.
- Communicate with executive presence: synthesise fragmented inputs into crisp narratives, business impact framing, and decision-ready updates for senior stakeholders.
- Mentor and uplevel others: coach TPM/PgM peers and partners on planning, execution standards, stakeholder management, and the craft of program leadership.
Requirements
- Prior experience at a software company driving programs within an Engineering organisation and having released at least three large-scale releases.
- Strong understanding of how to translate goals and strategy into plans for execution and experience supporting teams that design and build tools for other developers.
- Familiarity with Technical Program Management tools and agile methodologies: Jira, Confluence, Kanban, etc.
- Experience in identifying and calculating inherent risks, determining their impact, and providing appropriate mitigation planning.
- Strong, demonstrable facilitation skills, with a knack for building bridges between teams across multiple locations and driving decisions.
- Experience working across multiple global programs simultaneously.