[Confluent] Senior Technical Program Manager

IBM; Rochester (MN); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Rochester is seeking a Senior Technical Program Manager to lead multi-team AI initiatives across cloud platforms. You will own planning, risk management, dependencies, and stakeholder reporting, balancing speed with reliability in a fast-moving environment.

You’ll partner with Engineering, Product, Security, and data teams to ship complex programs, manage cross-region dependencies, and ensure on-time delivery.

Qualifications

• 4+ years TPM experience driving end-to-end lifecycle of complex projects across organizations.
• Experience with cloud platform engineering cross-functional projects and AI/ML platforms.
• Strong analytical skills and data-driven decision making.
• Knowledge of cloud networking fundamentals; familiarity with AI/ML concepts is a strong plus.
• Experience with JIRA, BigQuery, Google Apps Script.
• Strong communication and leadership for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field; Master’s degree preferred.

Responsibilities

• Drive cross-cutting initiatives with stakeholders to align priorities and outcomes.
• Ensure projects are delivered on time with regular progress updates.
• Identify and resolve roadblocks and risks impacting schedules.
• Make technical decisions to keep projects moving smoothly.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Product, and Security leadership to drive schedules.
• Lead cross-functional meetings and coordinate internal and external delivery.
• Engage with engineering/product stakeholders to enable end-to-end execution.
• Help Streaming AI teams understand upstream/downstream priorities.

Skills

Cloud networking

AI/ML concepts

Cross-functional leadership

Data-driven decision making

JIRA

BigQuery

Google Apps Script

Project lifecycle management

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Master's degree

Tools

JIRA

Google BigQuery

Google Apps Script

Job description

Introduction

At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You’ll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM’s product and technology landscape. Here, you’ll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.

Introduction

At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You’ll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM’s product and technology landscape. Here, you’ll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.

Your Role And Responsibilities

As a Senior Technical Program Manager (TPM), your day-to-day involves juggling multiple AI initiatives across numerous teams, stakeholder functions (Product, Security, Engineering leadership, etc.), and geographies. While closely monitoring dependencies with other orgs, you will drive planning, prioritization, risk management, stakeholder reporting, operations, and tradeoffs — often at the intersection of fast-moving AI/ML capabilities and Confluent\'s core streaming platform. A cross-org view is particularly strategic here, as you\'ll manage horizontal, multi-quarter programs spanning AI core features and platform reliability/security initiatives.

Driving these initiatives requires prior experience managing cloud projects, having an operational focus, experience with cross-group dependency management, the ability to deep-dive into technical issues and organizational problem-solving. A big focus for the TPM here would be to shield the development teams from chaos and streamline processes for smooth and successful on-schedule delivery of long-ranging programs.

Programs you own may span complex technical projects involving model inference performance and scalability, multi-region DR, streaming agent orchestration, and emerging AI protocol adoption. Hence a strong foundation in cloud fundamentals — and working fluency in AI/ML system concepts is necessary to deep-dive into technical areas and support these programs successfully.

Who You Are

• You are smart, humble, and empathetic.
• You have a strong sense of teamwork and put the team\'s and company\'s interests first.
• You are driven and excited about the challenges of a fast-paced, innovative software startup environment with a mindset of getting stuff done!

Responsibilities

• Work with stakeholders to drive cross-cutting and critical initiatives for the company.
• Ensure we can deliver projects on time, regularly communicating progress and status to key stakeholders.
• Proactively identify and resolve roadblocks/challenges affecting projects.
• Make technical decisions to keep projects running smoothly.
• Work with Engineering, Product, and Security leadership to streamline and drive projects on a predictable schedule.
• Run cross-functional meetings and drive decision-making around schedule adjustments, bug triage, and internal and external partner/customer delivery.
• Take ownership of engaging with various engineering and product stakeholders to drive E2E execution, including understanding potential risks and alignment models for competing priorities.
• Help the Streaming AI team understand the priorities of other dependent teams, both upstream and downstream, to unblock their roadmap needs.

Preferred Education

Master\'s Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Strong technical skills, especially knowledge of cloud networking fundamentals; working familiarity with AI/ML system concepts is a strong plus
• Strong analytical skills. Ability to use data to glean insights and trends and help engineering make better decisions.
• Prior TPM experience, a minimum of 4 years, in driving end-to-end lifecycle of complex and massive projects across organizations.
• Experience driving cloud platform engineering cross-functional projects; experience with AI/ML platform or infrastructure programs is a big plus.
• Experience driving operations across teams, creating dashboards is also a big plus.
• Experience with JIRA, BigQuery, Google App Scripts
• Strong communication, interpersonal and leadership skills to work with engineering and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience in highly agile environments applying JIRA reporting and sprint planning is a big plus.
• Bachelor\'s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Leading-Edge Technologies: Experience with designing, developing, and delivering software solutions using leading-edge technologies, including back-end and front-end development, and DevOps engineering.
• Agile Collaboration: Experience working in an Agile environment, collaborating with stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver high-quality software solutions.
• Automated CI/CD Pipelines: Experience contributing to automated CI/CD pipelines, ensuring seamless integration and delivery of software solutions.