Associate Program Manager - Delivery Operations

Deccan Ai; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 1,200,000 - 2,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Deccan Ai in Hyderabad seeks an Associate Program Manager for Delivery Operations to run day-to-day delivery for a major client engagement. You will own throughput, quality and utilisation against KPIs, coordinate across Team Leads, HLQA, Training, Quality and Operations, and ensure predictable delivery in an execution-focused role.

The role leads about 25 people, including TLs and associates, with responsibility for capacity planning, backlog management and SLA tracking.

Qualifications

• Experience: 3-5 years in delivery operations, including 1-2 years of team management.
• Hands-on with capacity planning, shift and queue management, SLA tracking.
• Ability to lead TLs and individual contributors, coach effectively and influence peers.
• Strong Excel or Google Sheets skills and ability to build dashboards.
• Excellent English communication, both written and spoken.
• Bachelor's degree; postgraduate degree or PMI/CSM/PRINCE2/Lean Six Sigma is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own daily rhythm: volume planning, work allocation, queue health and handovers.
• Review quality, productivity and utilisation; act on underperformance.
• Lead about 25 people, allocate tasks, track closures and provide coaching.
• Coordinate with Bangalore team on priorities, guidelines and reporting.
• Own reports and dashboards and flag risks with recommended actions.

Job description

Associate Program Manager - Delivery Operations

ROLE PURPOSE

The APM runs day-to-day delivery for a major client engagement. They own throughput, quality and utilisation against KPIs, coordinate across Team Leads, HLQA, Training, Quality and Operations, and keep delivery predictable. This is an execution-first role. It will grow to cover more programs as new projects come up.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Daily Operations Delivery

• Own the daily rhythm: volume planning, work allocation, queue health, shift handovers and end-of-day closure.
• Track production against plan and step in early on backlogs, idle capacity or blocked queues.
• Plan capacity and staffing against forecast, including shrinkage, leave and shift coverage.
• Keep turnaround time, batch closure and SLAs on track across all workstreams.

Performance Improvement

• Review quality, productivity, utilisation, throughput per head and rework every day and every week.
• Find underperformance at team, batch and individual level, work out why (skill, process, tooling, guidelines or workload) and act on it.
• Run root-cause analysis with Quality and HLQA, and see corrective actions through named owners and dates.
• Turn findings into measurable fixes, such as calibrations, refreshers, revised checklists or reallocating work. Work with Training to bring new joiners up to speed faster.

Team Leadership

• Lead about 25 people. Own task allocation, workload balancing and tracking for TLs and HLQA, so every task has an owner, a due date and a closure.
• Hold one-on-ones with Associates, coach them on quality and productivity, and handle recognition and PIPs.
• Work with Team Leads on allocation, escalations and floor execution. Clear blockers and escalates resourcing gaps with options.

Cross-Location Client Coordination

• Align with the Bangalore team on priorities, work split, guidelines, quality standards and reporting, so both sites work to one standard.
• Streamline communication across TLs, HLQA, Training, Quality, Operations and support teams.
• Be the clients daily point of contact on delivery, and prepare and present business reviews.

Reporting, Process Change

• Own the daily, weekly and monthly reports and dashboards, and keep one source of truth for delivery data.
• Turn the data into flagged risks and recommended actions.
• Deliver improvements that measurably cut effort, rework or cycle time, and automate manual work where you can.
• Manage guideline and scope changes across both sites, and keep SOPs current and version-controlled.

Governance Escalations

• Run stand-ups, reviews and retros where decisions are recorded and actions closed. Keep the risk and issue log up to date.
• Handle escalations from start to finish, and fix the root cause so they dont repeat.

  REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

  • Experience: 3-5 years in delivery operations, including 1-2 years managing a team. BPO, data-services or annotation experience on a large client account is preferred.
  • Operations: Hands-on with capacity planning, shift and queue management, SLA tracking and quality or productivity improvement.
  • People: Able to lead a team of TLs and individual contributors, coach effectively, and influence peers without direct authority.
  • Analytics: Strong in Excel or Google Sheets, and able to build dashboards and make decisions from data.
  • Communication: Excellent English, written and spoken. Comfortable running client reviews and calming down escalations.
  • Education: Bachelors degree in any discipline. A postgraduate degree or PMP, CSM, PRINCE2 or Lean Six Sigma certification is a plus.

  WHAT WE LOOK FOR

  Hands-on, proactive, focused on improvement, takes ownership, calm under pressure, and adaptable to changing scope.

  LOCATION GROWTH

  On-site in Hyderabad, with occasional travel to Bangalore. General shift, with flexibility to overlap with client hours and cover peak periods. The role leads to Program Manager and then Senior Program Manager or Delivery Lead.