Lead Technical Program Manager

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, which manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Lead Technical Program Manager based in Canada. We are seeking an experienced Lead Technical Program Manager to coordinate complex, cross-functional engineering programs within an innovative SaaS environment focused on AI-powered marketing technology. In this senior individual-contributor role, you will oversee critical platform releases, integrations, technical migrations, and engineering commitments for major enterprise clients. You will bring structure to fast-moving teams by establishing clear delivery plans, managing dependencies, and ensuring risks are identified before they affect outcomes. Working closely with engineering, product, and client-facing teams, you will translate business needs into realistic technical commitments and reliable execution plans. You will also help evolve program management practices, introduce AI-enabled workflows, and mentor other program managers. This remote opportunity is ideal for a technically fluent, highly autonomous leader who thrives in ambiguity and enjoys improving how engineering organizations deliver at scale.

Own a portfolio of complex, cross-team engineering programs, including platform releases, enterprise integrations, technical migrations, and high-impact client commitments. Manage engineering requests from Tier 1 enterprise clients, overseeing intake, scoping, prioritization input, sequencing, and delivery tracking. Translate client requirements into clear, actionable engineering work in collaboration with product managers, engineering leads, and client-facing teams. Establish readiness gates before external commitments are made, maintain realistic timelines, and provide a single reliable view of open client requests, ownership, status, and delivery dates. Anticipate conflicts between client demands and product roadmap priorities, surface trade-offs early, and recommend practical solutions. Design and maintain operating cadences that help engineering and product teams stay aligned, make timely decisions, and document outcomes without unnecessary meetings. Support sprint planning, standups, retrospectives, and demos, coordinating broader cross-team reviews when required. Create and maintain detailed workback plans, dependency maps, project trackers, and delivery schedules, ensuring ownership and progress remain visible. Keep project management tools, such as Linear, accurate and actionable, with issues properly assigned, estimated, labelled, and updated. Maintain trusted reporting views for production bugs, blocked work, in-flight programs, and client commitments so stakeholders can access status without additional meetings. Identify technical, operational, and schedule risks early, challenge unrealistic plans, resolve cross-team blockers, and escalate decisions to leadership when appropriate. Coordinate incident and client-interruption response through a designated first-responder process, ensuring urgent issues are routed and addressed without unnecessarily disrupting engineering teams. Produce clear weekly written updates for stakeholders and leadership, adapting the level of detail to the complexity of each program. Support product and engineering leaders with OKR tracking, progress reporting, and visibility into risks or deviations from objectives. Develop reusable templates, operating procedures, delivery frameworks, and automation that improve efficiency across the wider technical program management function. Mentor junior program managers, coordinate shared program activities, contribute to hiring interviews, and bring effective practices from leading AI-native engineering organizations into the team. Requirements At least 8 years of experience as a Technical Program Manager, ideally within AI/ML, platform infrastructure, developer tooling, or related technical environments. A proven track record of independently delivering complex, cross-functional programs involving multiple teams, external deadlines, technical dependencies, and significant business impact. Experience managing engineering delivery commitments for enterprise or Tier 1 clients, including requirement clarification, realistic scheduling, risk communication, and stakeholder alignment. Strong technical fluency, including the ability to understand system architectures, APIs, integration design, platform dependencies, and technical trade-offs without directly owning engineering implementation. An engineering background is highly desirable, particularly experience transitioning from software engineering or another technical discipline into program management. Excellent planning and organizational skills, with the ability to turn ambiguous requirements, incomplete specifications, and competing stakeholder perspectives into clear plans and recommended actions. Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to adapt updates for senior leadership, technical leads, and client-facing teams. Experience creating and maintaining dependency maps, workback schedules, delivery dashboards, escalation frameworks, and structured reporting processes. Demonstrated ability to identify risks proactively, challenge optimistic delivery estimates, resolve blockers directly, and reduce unnecessary escalations to senior leadership. Experience mentoring other program managers and developing reusable templates, workflows, and operating practices that improve team-wide performance. A track record of introducing tools, automation, or new ways of working that measurably reduce operational overhead and improve delivery efficiency. Strong judgment, autonomy, and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to balance delivery discipline against the need for speed and flexibility. Familiarity with AI-native engineering workflows and an interest in using AI tools to improve planning, coordination, reporting, and execution. Experience in a high-growth scale-up or an organization building infrastructure while simultaneously operating it under real customer workloads is an advantage. Ability to work remotely from within Canada and maintain regular working-hours overlap with teams based in London. Benefits Flexible remote work: Work from anywhere within your home country in Canada, the United States, or Latin America, subject to the role's location requirements. Paid time off: 25 days of PTO plus public holidays, with a flexible time-off approach. Health coverage: Health insurance or private medical coverage. Wellness and development: A monthly stipend to support fitness, wellness, and learning and development. Enhanced parental leave: Additional parental leave provisions for parents through birth, adoption, or surrogacy. Flexible working hours: Flexibility to organize your schedule while maintaining collaboration with international teams. Office access: Access to the company's London office at The Shard when visiting. Career development: Opportunities to influence engineering delivery practices, mentor other program managers, and help shape a growing technical program management function. Specific salary figures, retirement contributions, and additional compensation details were not disclosed in the provided job description.