Senior Engineering Program Manager - Global SRE

Apple

11h

About The Position

Join the AI, Search & Knowledge Platform Global SRE team as a Senior Engineering Program Manager. This organization is responsible for keeping some of Apple’s most heavily used, always-on AI and Search infrastructure reliable, resilient, and scalable. In this role, you will serve as a trusted partner to a London-based SRE Manager, extending their reach and driving alignment, visibility, and execution across time zones. This is a fast-moving, highly dynamic environment with an established operating cadence and a constant flow of new priorities. You will bring structure to ambiguity without creating unnecessary overhead, using sound judgment, adaptability, and a pragmatic approach to keep teams moving. This is also a hands-on role where you will engage deeply in the technical and operational details and personally lead high-impact programs, such as complex infrastructure migrations, when direct ownership is needed to accelerate progress. You will be the connective force that keeps a global SRE organization aligned, informed, and ahead of emerging risks and priorities. In this highly visible role, you will work alongside the London-based SRE Manager as a trusted partner and force multiplier across the organization’s global scope.

Requirements

5+ years of Technical Program/Project Management experience in a dynamic, fast-paced, global infrastructure or SRE environment.
Demonstrated ability to bring structure to ambiguous, fast-moving, multi-team environments; organizing chaos without over-engineering process (resourceful problem-solving).
Self-motivated, independent, and proactive; able to operate with minimal oversight and make sound real-time judgment calls.
Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and critical-thinking skills; able to quickly triage, prioritize, and lead cross-functional teams under pressure.
Willingness and ability to work evening hours to maximize real-time overlap with California-based teams.
BS/MS in EE/CS/CE or a relevant field, or equivalent practical experience.
Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with genuine fluency operating through Slack, docs, and async channels across time zones — comfortable being the one who \"scrubs\" the noise and keeps everyone current.
Experience in large-scale, global infrastructure environments.

Nice To Haves

10+ years of Technical Program Management experience, ideally spanning global internet services, large-scale international user bases, and responsibility for rapid-response operations.
Experience partnering directly with or effectively acting as an extension of an SRE manager/lead — operating with their judgment and authority when they are unavailable.
Familiarity with AI/ML, search, or knowledge platform infrastructure at scale.
Proven track record of raising team maturity improving processes, driving tooling adoption, and establishing operational consistency across newly formed or still-developing teams.
Strong technical/infrastructure background; bonus points for past hands-on engineering experience.
Innate drive to improve how things work, with a proven record of driving dramatic improvements in team quality, performance, agility, or effectiveness.
Strong customer-service orientation.

Responsibilities

Help strengthen operational excellence by identifying and closing gaps in processes, tooling, planning, and execution across a complex, matrixed SRE environment.
Bring structure and clarity to ambiguous, fast-moving inputs; including incidents, planning cycles, capacity forecasts, migrations, and leadership priorities and translate them into actionable plans with clear ownership, milestones, and timelines.
Deeply engage in the technical and operational details, personally driving high-impact infrastructure and platform programs from planning through delivery.
Partner with engineering teams on capacity forecasting, resource utilization, operational readiness, and continuous improvement, while identifying scalable approaches that improve the stability, resilience, and agility of our environments.
Evaluate existing workflows and recommend improvements that increase efficiency, consistency, accuracy, and scalability across the organization.
Use collaboration channels as an operational signal, synthesizing complex information, surfacing risks and dependencies, escalating critical issues, and ensuring teams and leaders remain aligned and informed.
Foster collaboration across cross-functional, globally distributed teams.
Build or improve communication and knowledge-sharing systems for a distributed org (Slack tooling/bots, digests, runbook hygiene, etc.).
Prioritize and manage multiple simultaneous requirements while pushing back when needed to protect alignment with priorities.
Direct, hands-on experience leading or heavily supporting infrastructure migrations or major operational cutovers, not just tracking them, but getting into the details yourself.