Program Manager

Tenarai; Town of Poland (NY); On-site; USD 59,000 - 86,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Office location

Onsite parking

Referral bonus

Life Insurance

Development budget

Learning platform access

MyBenefit access

Team Building activities

Charity initiatives

Diversity and inclusion

Job summary

Tenarai is seeking a Senior Program Manager to oversee an AI and automation service. You will manage end-to-end delivery from demand intake through maintenance, aligning processes with business value and cost constraints, and leading a distributed delivery team.

Responsibilities include defining intake, prioritising work, capacity planning, and reporting to VP-level stakeholders, while maintaining ongoing operation and evolution of the solution portfolio.

Qualifications

• At least 8 years of experience running development and automation projects and programmes, including at least 3 years in a management role, evidenced by delivered work.
• Ability to organise a team around processes and ways of working, not only around a schedule.
• Practical experience managing team capacity: utilisation, backlog, priorities, business justification of individual topics.
• Hands-on approach: set up tooling and reporting yourself rather than delegating it to the team.
• Experience communicating with stakeholders at VP level and above, adapting the message to the audience.
• Understanding of automation and AI based solutions to judge feasibility, effort and maturity of topics.
• Familiarity with cloud ecosystems a delivery team works in and with work management tooling.
• Fluent English, able to converse with senior leadership.
• Self sufficiency in remote work and experience leading a distributed team.
• This is a role for an experienced professional; not for those at the start of their management career.

Responsibilities

• Run the service across its whole lifecycle: demand intake and qualification, business justification, backlog, delivery, maintenance and post go live support.
• Build and run a single demand intake process: where requests land, how they are assessed, who decides what enters delivery and on what grounds.
• Set priorities, and park or decline requests deliberately, communicating that decision back to the requester.
• Plan and protect team capacity: utilisation, backlog, moving resources between topics.
• Report at two levels: a concise view for management and a detailed one at backlog and task level.
• Set the team's ways of working and bring the tooling to a state where it genuinely shows progress, utilisation and status.
• Lead within the service: work organisation, delivery standards, continuous improvement of how the team works.
• Work with business and technology stakeholders, including at VP level, and keep it transparent what the team is working on and with what result.
• Maintain and develop the portfolio of solutions already in operation, not only new deliveries.

Job description

We are looking for a Program Manager to take care of an AI and automation service at one of our clients. This is not a single project role. It is about running the whole service: from the moment a business demand appears, through assessment and delivery, to the maintenance and support of what is already running.

The role combines three things that are rarely looked for together: putting processes and ways of working in order, leading a delivery team, and holding a conversation with the business at senior management level. On top of that comes enough technical understanding to judge for yourself what is feasible and what it will cost.

Responsibilities

• Run the service across its whole lifecycle: demand intake and qualification, business justification, backlog, delivery, maintenance and post go live support.
• Build and run a single demand intake process: where requests land, how they are assessed, who decides what enters delivery and on what grounds.
• Set priorities, and park or decline requests deliberately, communicating that decision back to the requester.
• Plan and protect team capacity: utilisation, backlog, moving resources between topics.
• Report at two levels: a concise view for management and a detailed one at backlog and task level.
• Set the team's ways of working and bring the tooling to a state where it genuinely shows progress, utilisation and status.
• Lead within the service: work organisation, delivery standards, continuous improvement of how the team works. The role does not include disciplinary leadership such as HR matters or leave approvals.
• Work with business and technology stakeholders, including at VP level, and keep it transparent what the team is working on and with what result.
• Maintain and develop the portfolio of solutions already in operation, not only new deliveries.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of experience running development and automation projects and programmes, including at least 3 years in a management role, evidenced by delivered work.
• The ability to organise a team around processes and ways of working, not only around a schedule.
• Practical experience managing team capacity: utilisation, backlog, priorities, business justification of individual topics.
• A hands on approach. We expect you to set up the tooling and report yourself rather than delegating it to the team.
• Experience communicating with stakeholders at VP level and above, adapting the message to the audience.
• Enough understanding of automation and AI based solutions to judge feasibility, effort and the maturity of a given topic.
• Practical familiarity with the cloud ecosystem a delivery team works in, and with work management tooling.
• Fluent spoken and written English, at a level that supports comfortable conversation with senior leadership.
• Self sufficiency in remote work and experience leading a distributed team.
• This is a role for an experienced professional. We are not looking for candidates at the start of their management career.

Nice to have

• Experience in a Microsoft environment: Azure, Copilot Studio, Power Platform.
• Experience with RPA, UiPath in particular, and with Python.
• Familiarity with tooling for agent governance, observability and cost control.
• Process credentials such as Lean Six Sigma.
• Experience in a shared service centre or an organisation of comparable scale.

Must possess a legal work permit in Poland

General benefits - depends on the form of employment

• Attractively located office with collaboration spaces
• Onsite parking space for employees
• Referral program with financial bonus
• Life Insurance
• Budget for development (including language courses and others), clear career path with the possibility to gain experience in international environment
• Access to internal Learning Platform with multiple trainings oriented for professional growth
• Access to MyBenefit platform (Multisport included)
• Team Building activities
• Charity initiatives
• Working environment promoting diversity and inclusion