Staff Technical Program Manager - Confluent

As a Senior Technical Program Manager (TPM), you will be a key force-multiplier within Confluent's engineering organization. Your primary responsibility is leading the execution of high-priority, "cannot-fail" programs across our engineering organization. This role requires driving crucial cross-functional alignment across Engineering, Product, Finance, and Security teams to ensure predictable delivery of foundational platform programs.

What You Will Do

Drive Complex Initiatives: Lead end-to-end delivery of large-scale technical programs such as FedRAMP, compliance readiness, or platform-wide architecture shifts that directly impact Confluent's scalability and operational excellence.

Technical Liaison: Translate high-level business goals into detailed technical requirements and communicate complex architecture trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders including VP and C-suite audiences.

Operational Excellence: Establish rigorous program management standards, clear milestones, KPIs, risk-mitigation strategies, and regular status reporting, to ensure predictable, on-time delivery.

Strategic Alignment: Partner with engineering and product leadership to prioritize roadmaps, resolve cross-team dependencies, and manage resource allocation for business-critical programs.

Stakeholder Management: Facilitate decision-making across global, distributed teams and manage relationships with key internal and external partners.

Experience: 7+ years in a technical program management role, specifically within cloud-native or high-scale software environments.

Technical Depth: Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and SaaS platform engineering.

Leadership Style: Alignment with Confluent's values: Smart, Humble, and Empathetic; you thrive in fast-paced environments and "Get Stuff Done."

Proactive Problem-Solving: A results-driven mindset with the ability to navigate ambiguity, identify risks early, and drive resolution across complex dependencies.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Proven ability to work across Engineering, Product, Finance, and Security teams to align on goals and deliver outcomes at scale.

Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Familiarity with Confluent Platform or Apache Kafka.
• Experience building dashboards and reports using JQL, SQL, BigQuery, or Data Studio.
• Background working with or within an SRE, platform engineering, or infrastructure organization.