Senior Program Manager

Automatic Data Processing, Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 108,000 - 142,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

401k with company match

Flexible PTO

Paid volunteer days

Job summary

Lighthouse is seeking a Senior Program Manager to lead a formal Release Management Program in the United States. You will own area-level release orchestration, coordinate cross-functional teams, and drive readiness across multiple interdependent releases.

The role requires strong portfolio judgment, sequencing ability, risk management, and the capacity to present delivery health to leadership. This is a remote, full-time position with competitive compensation and benefits.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in program or release management, with ownership of a portfolio or program area.
• Ability to sequence and manage multiple interdependent releases across teams.
• Strong prioritization and decision judgment under pressure.
• Excellent orchestration, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.

Responsibilities

• Own the integrated release plan and calendar for the solution area, maintaining a current view of all releases and dependencies.
• Provide area-level oversight across all releases and integrate status, risks, and readiness into the area view.
• Orchestrate the area's release portfolio, aligning teams around an integrated plan and milestones.
• Drive release sequencing, prioritization, and tradeoffs across the area while managing capacity and resources.
• Maintain an integrated view of capacity and resource constraints and resolve conflicts by adjusting scope or timing.
• Own the integrated dependency picture across the area and escalate broader conflicts with recommended paths forward.
• Own the integrated risk and readiness picture for the area and ensure issues are visible and managed.
• Enforce defined readiness criteria and stage gates for each release and surface gaps early.
• Hold the area-level go/no-go decisions based on readiness and cross-area impacts; escalate as needed.
• Oversee execution of the release management framework within the area and ensure governance is followed.
• Guide and coordinate Release / Program Managers and other release owners to maintain discipline and delivery quality.
• Provide a trusted, integrated view of area release health to leadership and the enterprise release process.

Skills

Release management

Program management

Cross-functional leadership

Stakeholder management

Prioritization & decision making

Job description

If you are unable to complete this application due to a disability, contact this employer to ask for an accommodation or an alternative application process.

Senior Program Manager

Information Technology Full Time Admin/Ops Remote, Remote, US

Salary Range: $107,664.00 To $142,000.00 Annually

What is special about Lighthouse?

Lighthouse is built on a foundation of unique, compassionate, highly driven individuals. We elevate the strengths and talents of those around us while leveraging opportunities for growth. We offer the experience of solving complex problems while continuing to grow multiple facets of your career. Lighthouse is where innovation meets support and where collaboration is the key ingredient to success. We grow together and are stronger together.

What’s unique about this role?

With the implementation of a formal Release Management Program, the Area Release Manager is the area-level owner of release orchestration and readiness. Releases within a given solution area are often highly interdependent — sharing teams, platforms, data, infrastructure, and milestones — so decisions or delays in one can impact others.

The Area Release Manager owns that integrated, horizontal view across the area — understanding how releases interconnect, sequencing them accordingly, managing cross-release dependencies and resource contention, and assessing the downstream impact of changes. The role drives tradeoffs, enforces readiness, guides release owners, and represents the area's overall delivery health to leadership — without owning the underlying product decisions or technical execution. Success requires strong portfolio judgment and the ability to drive sequencing, prioritization, dependency resolution, and go / no-go decisions under pressure.

Core Responsibilities

What will this person do?

• Own the integrated release plan and calendar for the solution area, maintaining a current view of all releases — including ownership, scope, status, key dates, dependencies, readiness, and delivery confidence.
• Provide area-level oversight across all releases, with individual releases driven by Release / Program Managers or other designated owners who roll status, risks, dependencies, and readiness into the area view.
• Orchestrate the area's release portfolio, aligning the teams and functions applicable to each release around an integrated plan, sequencing, dependencies, milestones, and readiness expectations.
• Drive release sequencing, prioritization, and tradeoffs across the area, balancing dependencies, capacity, resource constraints, business priorities, and readiness and bringing the appropriate leaders together to resolve competing commitments.
• Maintain an integrated view of capacity and resource constraints, identifying where concurrent releases create competing demands or delivery risk and driving resolution through adjustments to scope, timing, sequencing, priorities, or resources.
• Own the integrated dependency picture across the area, driving resolution of dependencies and handoffs among releases, teams, products, platforms, shared services, and other solution areas; elevate broader conflicts with impact, options, and a recommended path forward.
• Own the integrated risk and readiness picture for the area, ensuring material risks, issues, blockers, and readiness gaps are visible, actively managed, and escalated appropriately.
• Enforce defined readiness criteria and stage gates for each release, ensuring applicable requirements are met across the functions the release impacts and surfacing gaps early for resolution.
• Hold the area-level go / no-go decision, based on defined readiness criteria and an integrated assessment of readiness across the applicable functions; elevate unresolved readiness concerns or cross-area impacts as needed.
• Oversee execution of the release management framework within the area, ensuring defined processes, lifecycle stages, gates, governance, and ways of working are consistently applied; identify and drive resolution of process issues, ownership or handoff gaps, and breakdowns across the release lifecycle and impacted pillars.
• Guide and coordinate Release / Program Managers and other release owners across the area, reinforcing expectations for planning, reporting, risk management, readiness, governance, work-tracking discipline, and delivery quality.
• Provide a trusted, integrated view of area release health to leadership and the enterprise release process, including releases, milestones, dependencies, capacity constraints, risks, readiness, and delivery confidence; ensure accurate, timely information is maintained in the designated system of record.

Bring your passion and together we will shine. It would also be great if you had the following:

• Extensive experience in program or release management, technical program management, or delivery leadership, including ownership of a portfolio or program area.
• Proven ability to sequence and manage multiple interdependent releases or programs across teams and functions.
• Strong prioritization and decision judgment; comfortable owning sequencing and go / no-go calls under pressure.
• Excellent orchestration, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills; drives alignment and decisions without direct authority.
• Command of enterprise release management practice — stage gates, release calendars, CAB, dependency mapping, DORA-style metrics; comfortable across Product, Engineering, and partner functions.

Work Environment and Physical Demands

• Duties are performed in a typical office environment while at a desk or computer table.
• Duties require the ability to use a computer, communicate over the telephone, and read printed material, in a quiet and professional setting.
• Duties may require being on call periodically and working outside normal working hours (evenings and weekends).

Lighthouse celebrates and thrives on diversity and is an Equal Opportunity Employer . We hire, train, and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law. We welcome any talents and contributions you can bring to the team and are deeply committed to growing an environment where everyone can feel safe, is respected, and can show up as themselves. Come as you are!

As required by applicable pay transparency laws, Lighthouse complies with compensation disclosure requirements for roles that may be hired in locations under these requirements. Factors that may be used to determine your actual salary may include a wide array of factors, including: your specific skills and experience, geographic location, or other relevant factors. The salary range for this position may be tailored to be lower or higher in different talent markets.

Lighthouse offers a comprehensive quality benefits package including medical, dental, vision, and a 401k with company match. Company paid benefits also include Life & AD&D, short and long-term disability, telemedicine, and other wellness plans. We offer a generous Flexible PTO program and paid volunteer days. Employees may also participate in voluntary insurance plans including accident, hospitalization, and critical illness plans as well as pet insurance.

This role will be eligible to participate in an annual bonus or incentive program.

As a trailblazer and catalyst for change, Lighthouse rises to each opportunity to help our clients, and our people do what they do best—shine.