Program Manager Strategic Initiatives Jobs in Princeton, NJ

Our Program Management function plays a vital role in keeping Justworks' Technology Division - comprising Product, Design, Engineering, and Data - focused and connected. We connect dots and break silos across teams by maintaining an effective operating cadence, managing strategic initiatives, and leading special projects that help translate strategy into execution. 

You're excited by the idea of leading initiatives across the organization and driving impact. Everything you deliver is backed by a solid strategy. You maintain confidence throughout all your projects and are committed to getting things done.

As a Lead Program Manager within the Technology team, you will work closely with Product, Design, Engineering, Data, and Operations to accelerate the delivery of high-impact initiatives that are critical to driving our strategy and alignment with company goals. You will drive product initiatives forward that have multiple stakeholders, competing deadlines, and many moving parts. In this role, you'll act as a bridge between functions and teams, developing frameworks that streamline program execution, optimize resource allocation, and drive accountability across initiatives across multiple product domains.

• Partner with Technology and Business leaders to identify, assess, and shape high-priority initiatives before formal program investment decisions are made.
• Lead discovery efforts to determine whether emerging initiatives require dedicated program management support, lightweight operating structures, or alternative execution models.
• Establish program foundations for newly formed initiatives, including governance structures, operating rhythms, stakeholder alignment models, success metrics, and execution frameworks.
• Serve as a senior program leadership resource across the Technology portfolio, deploying into high-priority, high-risk, or complex initiatives to accelerate progress, stabilize execution, or unblock delivery.
• Lead multiple concurrent programs and advisory engagements spanning Product, Engineering, Design, Data, Operations, and other cross-functional business teams.
• Assess program health across the portfolio, identifying systemic risks, execution gaps, organizational dependencies, and opportunities to improve outcomes.
• Design and implement repeatable program management standards, frameworks, and operating mechanisms that improve execution quality across the organization.
• Coach program managers and cross-functional leaders on program management practices, stakeholder alignment, governance design, risk management, and organizational change.
• Partner with Program Management leadership to evolve portfolio management practices, resource planning approaches, staffing models, and program intake processes.
• Facilitate executive-level decision-making by synthesizing complex information, framing tradeoffs, and providing recommendations on prioritization, sequencing, and investment.
• Drive turnaround efforts for programs requiring intervention, including clarifying ownership, resetting plans, rebuilding stakeholder alignment, and restoring execution momentum.
• Identify opportunities to improve organizational effectiveness through better operating models, scalable mechanisms, automation, AI-enabled workflows, and durable systems.
• Build reusable playbooks, templates, frameworks, and knowledge assets that raise the effectiveness of the broader Program Management function.

As a Lead Program Manager, how results are achieved is paramount for your success and ultimately result in our success as an organization. In this role, your foundational knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes are anchored in the following competencies:

• Customer focus - builds strong customer relationships and delivers customer-centric solutions.
• Teamwork and communication - putting our collective best together through documentation, collaboration, relationship-building, listening, empathy, recruiting, and evangelism.
• Nimble learning - actively learning through experimentation when tackling new problems, using both successes and failures as learning fodder.
• Results-driven - consistently achieves results, even under difficult circumstances.
• Strategic mindset - anticipates future trends and implications accurately; articulates credible pictures and visions of possibilities that will create sustainable value.
• Detail-oriented - exercises extreme attention to detail; is thorough, accurate, organized, and productive and seeks to understand both the cause and effect of a situation.
• Ethical practice - the ability to integrate core values, integrity, and accountability throughout all organizational and business practices.
• Clear communication - the ability to articulate thoughts and express ideas effectively using oral, written, visual, and non-verbal communication skills, as well as listening skills to gain understanding.
• Analytical - uses a logical reasoning process to break down and work through a situation or problem to arrive at an outcome.
• Good judgment - the exercise of critical thinking, analyzing and assessing problems and implications, identifying patterns, making connections of underlying issues, understanding risks and developing mitigation strategies, and taking ownership of the outcome.

In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for:

• Camaraderie - Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You're an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others.
• Openness - Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You're curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others.
• Grit - You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You're committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude.
• Integrity - Simply put, do what you say and say what you'll do. You're honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example. 
• Simplicity - Be like Einstein: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." 

• Minimum of 8+ years of experience in strategy, operations, management consulting, program management, product operations, business operations, or a related cross-functional leadership role.
• Demonstrated experience leading highly ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives that span multiple teams, organizations, or business functions.
• Proven ability to translate emerging strategies, executive priorities, or loosely defined opportunities into actionable plans, operating models, and measurable outcomes.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to evaluate organizational tradeoffs, investment decisions, operating models, and long-term strategic implications.
• Exceptional systems thinker who can identify patterns, dependencies, organizational friction points, and opportunities for leverage across complex environments.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders and executive stakeholders without direct authority, driving alignment across competing priorities and perspectives.
• Experience establishing structure where little exists, including defining ownership models, governance mechanisms, decision-making frameworks, and operating rhythms.
• Strong technical fluency and curiosity, with the ability to quickly develop expertise in new domains, technologies, products, and business models.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations for executive audiences.
• Creative systems thinker who thrives in ambiguity, demonstrates strong judgment, and has a passion for simplifying complexity and accelerating organizational outcomes.