Technical Program Manager

Job description

ABOUT THE ROLE We’re building out a Technical Program Management function to ensure our most important cross-team initiatives ship on time, with the visibility and data needed to support confident trade-off decisions across the organization. As our second TPM, you’ll take ownership of the day-to-day execution of multiple company-critical programs. You’ll work closely with Engineering, Product, and Design to surface dependencies, align sequencing, mitigate risks, and drive clarity across teams. This role makes the complex work of shipping across multiple teams predictable, visible, and well-coordinated. You’ll operate as a tight partner with the lead TPM, sharing a single consistent message to leadership while owning your programs end-to-end. WHAT YOU’LL DO PROGRAM EXECUTION - Own end-to-end delivery of company-critical, cross-team programs, aligning work with company priorities and product strategy - Drive cross-team dependency management and sequencing so teams are never surprised by upstream or downstream blockers - Drive explicit, ongoing scope alignment between Engineering and Product—surfacing rescoping risks early so they don’t cascade into schedule slips - Identify risks early and closely monitor progress on business-critical programs, intervening before issues become schedule-threatening - Improve delivery predictability for customer-facing commitments COMMUNICATION & VISIBILITY - Communicate program health, tradeoffs, and decisions clearly and consistently to stakeholders and leadership - Surface tradeoffs early and explicitly so that prioritization decisions happen deliberately, not reactively - Provide relevant data to create visibility into product development processes and progress CROSS-FUNCTIONAL PARTNERSHIP - Pair closely with Product and Engineering leads to share context, enabling effective decision-making - Build strong, trust-based relationships with engineers to understand challenges and remove blockers - Free up Engineering and Product leaders from ad-hoc coordination, progress tracking, and timeline alignment CHANGE MANAGEMENT - Implement change management within the Product & Engineering org - Reduce rework caused by misaligned sequencing or unclear ownership - Support the organization’s growth in teams and initiatives while minimizing associated chaos WHAT YOU’LL ENABLE This role isn’t just about what you do—it’s about the capacity you create for the teams around you and the pace at which the organization can ship. FOR THE ORGANIZATION - Help teams ship complex, multi-team products faster by removing coordination bottlenecks and keeping critical paths clear - Help teams operate like well-oiled machines—with clear ownership, predictable cadences, and fewer fire drills - Enable faster, clearer tradeoff decisions when priorities collide across teams - Create the connective tissue that lets the company scale its initiative count without scaling its chaos FOR PRODUCT MANAGERS With less time spent coordinating how things ship, PMs can invest more in: - Product strategy, roadmap quality, and use case definition - Customer discovery and feedback loops - Clear problem definition and success metrics - Prioritization within their domain - Partnering with Engineering on solution direction FOR ENGINEERING MANAGERS With less time spent on cross-team coordination overhead, EMs can focus more on: - Team health, hiring, and retention - Technical direction and quality - Coaching and growing engineers - Delivery confidence without last-minute surprises QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED - 5+ years of experience leading complex technical or cross-functional programs - Experience working in fast-growing startups or rapidly evolving organizations - Strong experience working directly with Engineering teams on delivery - A track record of shipping large initiatives involving multiple teams - Comfort navigating technical discussions, dependencies, and tradeoffs - The ability to surface risks early and push back constructively when needed - Strong written and verbal communication skills - Proven ability to lead through influence and relationships, not hierarchy - Comfort with ambiguity and willingness to adapt in a fast-changing environment NICE TO HAVE - Experience building or scaling a TPM function from the ground up - Experience with AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude) and how they can accelerate coordination and execution - Background working in B2B SaaS or platform companies - Experience establishing delivery metrics, reporting cadences, or program health dashboards - Prior experience partnering with Customer Success or Go-to-Market teams on launch coordination ABOUT NETBOX LABS: NetBox Labs helps companies build and manage complex networks. We help customers accelerate network automation by delivering open, composable products and supporting the network automation community. NetBox Labs is the commercial steward of open source NetBox, the world’s most popular network source of truth, and Orb, the next-generation open source network observability platform. Our products include NetBox Enterprise, a fully supported self-managed NetBox with advanced features, and NetBox Cloud, a secure, scalable, and reliable SaaS edition of NetBox. NetBox powers thousands of companies, and NetBox Labs is backed by investment from Notable Capital (formerly GGV), Grafana Labs CEO Raj Dutt, Flybridge, IBM, Salesforce Ventures, and Mango Capital. OUR CULTURE AND VALUES: - We own and solve problems with high attention to detail. - Our open source contributors, users, customers & team are all part of our community. When our community wins, we win. - We prioritize simplicity and think twice before adding complexity - Clear communication helps keep our team aligned and collaborating smoothly. NetBox Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe diverse teams build better software, and we welcome applicants of every race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, and veteran status. If you need accommodation at any point in the process, just let us know.