Payments Program Manager Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Location: Austin TX – Hybrid
Job Type: Contract
Duration: 6 Months, Extendable
Experience: 8+ Years
Pay Range - $60-$65/hr USD

We are seeking an experienced Technical Program Manager (TPM) to join a high-performing Technical Program Management organization supporting large-scale Payments & Financial Services technology initiatives.

The ideal candidate will have a strong software/technical background and proven experience leading complex, cross-functional technology programs across Engineering, Product, Business, Design, Analytics, Marketing, and Operations.

This role will orchestrate strategic, multi-domain initiatives supporting payments, seller payouts, financial services, monetization, merchant services, and other high-impact technology platforms serving millions of customers across global markets.

The successful candidate will be comfortable operating in a highly matrixed environment, managing ambiguity, driving executive-level communication, and influencing teams without direct authority.

Technical Program Leadership

• Lead complex, multi-team technical programs from strategy and planning through launch and post-production.

• Translate business objectives into program plans, milestones, dependencies, roadmaps, and measurable outcomes.

• Manage multiple interconnected workstreams across Engineering, Product, Operations, Business, and other functions.

• Establish program governance, operating rhythms, decision forums, and escalation mechanisms.

• Drive annual and quarterly planning, prioritization, intake governance, capacity planning, and roadmap development.

Planning & Execution

• Develop integrated roadmaps, delivery plans, critical paths, milestones, and release schedules.

• Identify cross-team dependencies, resource constraints, sequencing conflicts, and delivery risks.

• Drive execution against scope, schedule, quality, budget, and business objectives.

• Maintain clear accountability for deliverables, owners, dates, decisions, and dependencies.

• Lead launch readiness, go-live coordination, ramp plans, and post-launch monitoring.

• Facilitate trade-off discussions and secure commitments from dependency owners.

Technical Acumen

• Partner closely with engineers, architects, and technical leads to understand system architecture, APIs, data flows, cloud infrastructure, and platform dependencies.

• Evaluate technical trade-offs, integration risks, scalability concerns, and implementation constraints.

• Understand the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Agile/Scrum/Kanban, DevOps, CI/CD, testing, release management, and production-readiness processes.

• Translate complex technical concepts and trade-offs into clear business and executive-level communication.

Risk & Issue Management

• Proactively identify technical, operational, organizational, and business risks.

• Develop mitigation plans, contingency strategies, and escalation criteria.

• Identify and resolve blockers across teams with competing priorities.

• Conduct root-cause analysis and use program metrics to identify potential delivery risks before milestones are impacted.

Stakeholder & Executive Management

• Drive alignment across Engineering, Product, Design, Operations, Analytics, Marketing, and Business teams.

• Lead through influence, negotiation, and effective information management rather than formal authority.

• Facilitate prioritization, scope, resource, and technical trade-off discussions.

• Prepare executive-ready status reports, dashboards, risk registers, decision documents, and presentations.

• Present program health, blockers, recommendations, and trade-offs to senior leadership and steering committees.

• Maintain transparency and accountability across global, matrixed organizations.

Data, Metrics & Reporting

• Define program success metrics, operational KPIs, delivery indicators, and program-health measures.

• Analyze program and product metrics to identify trends, systemic risks, and areas for improvement.

• Track schedule variance, defects, resource capacity, dependencies, and launch readiness.

• Build dashboards and reporting mechanisms that provide actionable visibility to stakeholders and executives.

• Experience with Tableau, Looker, or Power BI is a plus.

AI & Generative AI

• Purposefully leverage AI and Generative AI technologies to improve program-management efficiency and automate manual processes.

• Use AI tools to accelerate program planning, documentation synthesis, reporting, requirements analysis, and execution.

• Establish repeatable AI-enabled workflows rather than treating AI as an experimental technology.

• Define future ways of working and mentor TPMs/PMOs on effective AI adoption.

• Lead retrospectives and codify best practices, playbooks, and operating procedures to drive continuous improvement.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

• 8+ years of experience working with Program Management, Software Development, Technical, Operations, Product, Sales, or Marketing organizations.

• Proven experience leading large-scale, cross-functional technology programs from conception through successful delivery.

• Strong software/technical background with the ability to communicate effectively with Engineering and Architecture teams.

• Strong understanding of system architecture, APIs, data flows, cloud platforms, integrations, and software development practices.

• Experience managing multiple complex workstreams and cross-functional dependencies.

• Strong understanding of Agile, Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, CI/CD, testing, and release management.

• Demonstrated ability to operate independently in ambiguous and rapidly changing environments.

• Strong stakeholder-management, negotiation, influence, and conflict-resolution skills.

• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and executive communication skills.

• Experience presenting to senior leadership, steering committees, VP-level, or C-suite audiences.

• Experience in Payments, Financial Services, FinTech, eCommerce, Marketplace, Banking, or related technology environments.

• Experience working with globally distributed engineering organizations.

• Experience with large-scale payment platforms, seller payments/payouts, financial products, merchant services, monetization, or financial technology.

• Experience with Jira, Confluence, Airtable, Smartsheet, or similar program-management tools.

• Strong proficiency with Excel or Google Sheets for reporting and capacity planning.

• Experience with Tableau, Power BI, Looker, or similar analytics platforms.

• Experience developing program dashboards, executive reporting, governance frameworks, and operating models.

The ideal candidate is a technical TPM with a software-engineering background, not simply a traditional project manager.

We are looking for someone who can:

• Understand technical architecture and engineering challenges.

• Drive complex programs involving multiple engineering teams.

• Translate business objectives into executable technology roadmaps.

• Identify dependencies and delivery risks early.

• Influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.

• Communicate effectively with engineers and executives.

• Use data to drive decisions.

• Leverage AI/GenAI as part of their regular TPM workflow.

• Bring structure and clarity to ambiguous, high-impact initiatives.