Technical Program Management

We are hiring our first Technical Program Manager to drive execution across Chalk’s most important initiatives. Chalk’s surface area is growing quickly: the Chalk Context Engine serves features to models and agents in single-digit milliseconds, and Chalk Compute runs models and agents securely inside our customers’ own clouds. Every launch spans engineering, product, docs, and go-to-market, and we need someone who keeps all of it moving.

You’ll work directly with our founders, VP of Product, and engineering leads to build and run our program management systems, processes, and culture. We want to move fast, and any process that slows us down should be there because it leads to better decisions and products.

We’re in the office 5 days a week. When unavoidable conflicts come up, we’re flexible. This is not a hybrid role.

What you will do

• Drive Chalk’s largest cross-functional programs end to end, including critical product launches, with complete independence
• Build the program management systems, processes, and culture that change how teams think, decide, collaborate, measure progress, and deliver
• Elevate the execution capability of the engineering teams around you
• Own timelines, dependencies, and risks for major platform initiatives - surface tradeoffs early and drive them to decisions
• Run launch readiness for new products and capabilities, coordinating engineering delivery with docs, marketing, and customer-facing teams
• Give founders and engineering leads clear visibility into program health, blockers, and outcomes
• Influence and, where necessary, push back on leads and execs: force sequencing tradeoffs, tell us when we’re not ready to ship, and help us focus by saying no to more things
• Participate actively in product and engineering design, identifying risks and opportunities in technical strategy, architecture, and how we structure the engineering org
• Unblock teams: chase down dependencies, resolve conflicts, and keep decisions moving

Project/Program Management, Technical Leadership, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Application Programming Interface (API), Continuous Improvement, Data Warehousing, Process Improvement, Reliability Engineering, Project/Program Management, Cloud Computing, * 10+ years of experience, including 6+ years of technical program management experience

• Track record of shipping complex, multi-team technical programs from concept to launch
• Strong technical depth: you can follow architecture discussions, pressure-test engineering plans, and understand how data infrastructure and ML systems fit together
• Crisp written and verbal communication: your program proposals, reviews, and decision/tradeoff docs create clarity and get buy-in from engineers and execs alike
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity; you build structure where none exists
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent

Bonus points

• Prior experience as a software engineer or in another hands-on technical role
• Experience launching developer-facing platforms, APIs, or ML/data infrastructure
• Experience as the first TPM or program hire at a startup
• Familiarity with some of the systems we build and run:
• Data: streaming and batch feature pipelines, data warehousing, analytics, BI
• Serving and infrastructure: single-digit-millisecond online serving, serverless compute, and Kubernetes deployments inside customer VPCs (“Bring Your Own Cloud” deployments)
• AI: training, fine-tuning, serving, and deploying models, plus agentic applications
• Languages: Python, SQL, Rust, and Go

️Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance

Flexible Spending Account (FSA), Health Savings Account (HSA)

Expert Healthcare Guidance

Retirement savings

15 company holidays each year

️15 days of personal time off each year

Flex Commuter Benefits

Daily lunch and dinner on Chalk

Office is fully-stocked with drinks and snacks to fuel your work day.

️ Staying late? Dinner is on us

Staying even later? Grab an Uber / Lyft home on Chalk, Chalk offers early team members a generous salary + equity package based on experience and competitive benefits.

Actual compensation awarded to successful candidates will be based on several factors, including but not limited to: market, location, scope of the position and individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process.

Our comprehensive total package plays a major role in how we recognize individuals for the impact they will have on Chalk’s growth and us achieving our goals.

Chalk (chalk.ai) is the platform for production AI. Trusted by enterprises including Whatnot, Grindr, Mission Lane, Turo, and Apartment List, Chalk brings together context, runtime, and learning for agents and models. Chalk’s Context Engine delivers live context by querying data across warehouses, databases, streams, and APIs, straight from the source. Chalk’s runtime powers agents and models with infrastructure and governed access to LLMs and tools. Together, these capabilities help teams build AI that understands their business, continuously improves, and runs reliably in production. We’ve recently raised a $50 million Series A, led by Felicis. Learn more at chalk.ai., Chalk is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and inclusion and provide reasonable accommodations to anyone in need of individualized support.