Technical Program Manager

Motion Recruitment; Foster City (CA); On-site; USD 152,000 - 207,000; Full time

Job summary

Motion Recruitment is seeking a Technical Program Manager in Foster City, CA to lead large-scale engineering initiatives across multiple teams. You will partner with VP- and Director-level leaders to shape roadmaps, manage resources, and drive execution strategy.

The contract is a 6-month W2 engagement requiring deep technical program leadership, strong communication, and expertise in AI-enabled project delivery within distributed systems.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of Technical Program Management experience.
• Full SDLC experience across platform, infrastructure, and/or product engineering.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end program management for large-scale, multi-team engineering initiatives.
• Influence roadmaps, resource planning, and execution strategy with senior leaders.
• Drive alignment across engineering teams, external partners, and dependencies.

Skills

Program management

Executive communication

Risk management

AI tooling

Architectural discussion

Education

PMP / PgMP or Agile/Scrum certification

Tools

Kafka/KafkaJS

Protobuf

AWS cloud infrastructure

API Gateways

Job description

Our client, an autonomous vehicle company, is looking for someone to join their team as a Technical Program Manager in Foster City, CA!

This is a 6-month W2 contract

What You Will Be Doing

• Lead end-to-end program management for large-scale, multi-team engineering initiatives, from strategy and planning through execution and delivery.
• Partner with VP- and Director-level Engineering and Product leaders to influence roadmaps, resource planning, priorities, and execution strategy.
• Drive alignment across multiple engineering teams, systems, business lines, external partners, and complex dependencies.
• Identify, anticipate, and proactively manage program risks, escalations, dependencies, and trade-offs.
• Establish and improve program management frameworks, processes, tools, and best practices across the engineering organization.
• Communicate complex technical concepts and program status clearly to executive and cross-functional audiences, translating between technical details and business impact.
• Participate in architectural and technical scoping discussions, providing input on feasibility, sequencing, dependencies, and delivery risk.
• Bring structure and clarity to ambiguous problems and drive teams toward timely decisions and outcomes.
• Use AI tools to evaluate technical designs, code changes, implementation approaches, and technical risks.
• Incorporate AI chatbots and agentic AI capabilities into program planning, technical analysis, and execution workflows.

Required Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of experience in Technical Program Management, with a proven track record of delivering complex, multi-team engineering programs.
• Deep experience managing software programs across the full SDLC, including platform, infrastructure, and/or product engineering initiatives.
• Strong technical foundation with the ability to engage effectively in architectural discussions, understand system design trade-offs, and assess technical risk.
• Exceptional communication and executive presence, with the ability to influence without authority and work effectively across organizational boundaries.
• Experience developing or improving program management processes, operating models, and tooling at an organizational level.
• Strong ability to manage ambiguity, drive clarity, prioritize effectively, and make sound decisions in fast-paced environments.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI tools to make informed technical decisions related to system designs and code changes.
• Understanding of agentic AI models and how to effectively execute technical programs using AI-powered tools and chatbots.
• Strong problem-solving, troubleshooting, and debugging skills.
• Technical understanding of wireless, networking, data pipeline, and cloud infrastructure technologies, including:
• Wireless: 4G/5G, Multi-WAN, load balancing
• Networking: UDP/TCP, NAT traversal, network security, mTLS
• Data & Infrastructure: Kafka/KafkaJS, Protobuf serialization, AWS cloud infrastructure, API Gateways

Preferred Skills

• Experience at a software company working on infrastructure, platform, or product engineering programs.
• Familiarity with AWS, GCP, or Azure cloud services.
• Understanding of distributed systems and large-scale software architectures.
• PMP, PgMP, Agile, or Scrum certification.
• Prior experience as a software engineer or in another hands-on technical role.
• Experience working with AI/ML platforms, agentic AI systems, or AI-assisted software development.
• Experience driving programs involving highly distributed, networked, or real-time systems.