Staff Technical Program Manager - AI/ML

Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 226,000 - 338,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

Matching 401(k)

Paid time off

Wellness program

Employee discounts for Sony products

Job summary

Sony Interactive Entertainment in San Mateo, CA seeks a Staff Technical Program Manager for AI/ML to lead and deliver production ML systems. You will partner with data scientists, engineers, and product teams to architect, train, deploy, and monitor ML products serving millions of users.

You will drive cross-team alignment, manage timelines across time zones, and own vendor tooling relationships to ensure production readiness and cost-effective delivery.

Qualifications

• 7+ years as a technical program manager, with at least 3 years specifically on AI/ML or applied data science delivery.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Working fluency in the ML lifecycle and ability to navigate data quality vs infra vs model performance tradeoffs.
• Track record of running distributed, cross-timezone engineering programs end-to-end.
• Demonstrated ability to drive decisions among senior technical stakeholders without formal authority.
• Experience managing day-to-day execution for agile/scrum teams, including sprint planning, backlog health, and velocity tracking.
• Strong written and verbal communication across technical and executive audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own the delivery roadmap for one or more AI/ML systems in production, from model concept through training, deployment, and post-launch monitoring.
• Define success with our business partners before delivery begins.
• Partner with applied scientists, Data Engineering, and ML Engineering to translate model performance targets into a program plan.
• Drive alignment across engineering, product, and data analytics on scope and sequencing.
• Track model and system health post-launch, adoption, drift, cost, and incident rate; drive remediation when metrics degrade.
• Manage cross-team and cross-timezone dependencies for distributed teams, surfacing schedule risk early.
• Own vendor and third-party tooling relationships intersecting with ML delivery, including production readiness and issue tracking.
• Communicate program status, risk, and tradeoffs to non-technical and technical stakeholders.

Skills

Technical program management

AI/ML delivery

Cross-functional collaboration

Agile/Scrum

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

ML infrastructure tooling

Feature stores

Experimentation platforms

Model registries

MLOps pipelines

Job description

Sony Interactive Entertainment isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is the company behind the PlayStation brand. As a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation, we’re part of a proud legacy of innovation and excellence. SIE is a dynamic technology company, delivering cutting‑edge hardware and network services to more than 100 million people and an entertainment leader, home to some of the most beloved and recognizable intellectual properties (IP) in the world. Our role at SIE is to create and nurture the experiences under the PlayStation brand, a name synonymous with entertainment excellence and creativity.

Staff Technical Program Manager - AI/ML

San Mateo, CA

Do you want to join an AI/Machine Learning Engineering team committed to delivering the PlayStation experience for millions of users? The work we do delivers impactful insights to build an increasingly dynamic and interactive experience! The AI/ML Engineering Group delivers optimized interactions across PlayStation experiences and systems by designing, coding, training, documenting, cost‑effectively deploying and evaluating very large‑scale machine learning systems.

We are looking for a Staff Program Management who helps us deliver delightful AI and ML products and experiences for millions, in an agile environment, collaborating with teams‑across Engineering, Product and Design. Further, you will be immersed in AI/ML technologies, tools and processes, as you help to advance our technical objectives and architectural initiatives

This role sits inside an AI/ML Engineering organization delivering production machine learning systems at platform scale, personalization, recommendation, experimentation, or trust & safety models serving a large, global user base. The team designs, trains, deploys, and continuously evaluates products in production, spanning applied science, AI, ML infrastructure, and engineering.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the delivery roadmap for one or more AI/ML systems in production, from model concept through training, deployment, and post-launch monitoring.
• Define success with our business partners before delivery begins
• Partner with applied scientists, Data Engineering, and ML Engineering to translate model performance targets (accuracy, latency, cost-per-inference) into a program plan with clear milestones and dependencies
• Drive alignment across engineering, applied science, product, and data analytics on scope, tradeoffs, and sequencing when priorities are ambiguous or contested
• Track model and system health post-launch, adoption, drift, cost, and incident rate — and drive remediation when metrics degrade, rather than treating launch as the finish line
• Manage cross-team and cross-timezone dependencies for distributed system and ML teams, surfacing schedule risk early
• Own vendor and third-party tooling relationships that intersect with ML delivery (labeling, compute, evaluation tooling), including production readiness and issue tracking
• Communicate program status, risk, and tradeoffs in terms non-technical stakeholders can act on, and in terms technical stakeholders will trust
• Identify and resolve conflicts between competing technical approaches or team priorities, escalating only what genuinely requires executive input.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years as a technical program manager, with at least 3 years specifically on AI/ML or applied data science delivery
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
• Working fluency in the ML lifecycle, can understand why a deployment might be blocked on data quality vs; infra vs. model performance, and ask the right question in each case
• Track record of running distributed, cross-timezone engineering programs end-to-end
• Demonstrated ability to drive decisions among senior technical stakeholders without formal authority.
• Experience managing day-to-day execution for agile/scrum teams, including sprint planning, backlog health, and velocity tracking
• Strong written and verbal communication across both highly technical and executive/non-technical audiences

Preferred Qualifications

• Gaming Experience is a Plus
• Direct experience in the specific AI/ML domain named for this role (e.g, trust & safety, personalization, recommendation, experimentation).
• Experience with ML infrastructure tooling (feature stores, experimentation platforms, model registries, MLOps pipelines)
• Prior work directly under or alongside engineering leadership
• Demonstrated curiosity to continuing to learn new AI/ML techniques and tooling

At SIE, we consider several factors when setting each role’s base pay range, including the competitive benchmarking data for the market and geographic location.

Please note that the base pay range may vary in line with our hybrid working policy and individual base pay will be determined based on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location.

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• Matching 401(k)
• Paid time off
• Wellness program
• Employee discounts for Sony products

This role also may be eligible for a bonus package.

The estimated base pay range for this role is listed below.

$225,600 - $338,400 USD

Please note, Sony Interactive Entertainment conducts background checks at the offer stage for all new employees (which may include criminal background checks for some roles) and will need to process personal information to support these checks.

Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more information about what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your data protection rights.

Equal Opportunity Statement:

Sony is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender (including gender identity, gender expression and gender reassignment), race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, maternity or parental status, trade union membership or membership in any other legally protected category.

We strive to create an inclusive environment, empower employees and embrace diversity. We encourage everyone to respond.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is a Fair Chance employer and qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for employment.

Use of AI in Recruiting

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