Software Program Manager

KION•Grand Rapids, MI

About The Position

Lead the delivery, stabilization, enhancement, and lifecycle management of mission-critical warehouse software solutions for strategic customers. The Software Program Manager connects software development, project execution, customer operations, and service delivery teams to translate technical work into reliable operational outcomes. The role combines senior technical leadership, program ownership, customer governance, cross-functional coordination, and accountability for software roadmaps, releases, enhancements, and production stabilization. The role leads multiple concurrent software workstreams, releases, enhancements, and stabilization activities in strategic customer environments. It operates as a senior individual contributor with broad influence across technical, commercial, project, service, and customer organizations, supporting customer-facing governance, roadmap planning, risk management, release decisions, and software-improvement prioritization. The position also coordinates the lifecycle transition from project delivery into stable operational support and continual improvement.

Responsibilities

Lead customer software programs from planning through deployment, stabilization, enhancement, and lifecycle support.
Create and maintain integrated software delivery roadmaps, milestone plans, release schedules, dependency maps, stabilization plans, and decision logs.
Coordinate software development, configuration, testing, validation, deployment, production support, and defect remediation across multiple technical teams.
Lead recurring customer steering committees, program reviews, technical planning sessions, and status meetings.
Communicate delivery status, risks, issues, release readiness, decisions, and corrective actions clearly, accurately, and promptly.
Manage customer expectations and facilitate prioritization of defects, enhancements, performance improvements, and modernization initiatives.
Coordinate release readiness reviews, implementation planning, change windows, validation plans, rollback considerations, and post-deployment support.
Drive resolution of production defects and performance issues by engaging appropriate development, engineering, infrastructure, project, and service resources.
Manage enhancement intake and definition; coordinate scope development, ROM estimates, Statements of Work, resource planning, and implementation plans.
Partner with Customer Service, Managed Services, and Remote Support to improve operational readiness, escalation paths, knowledge transfer, and supportability.
Participate in access-control, identity-management, user-role, security, application governance, and compliance discussions relevant to delivered solutions.
Identify recurring delivery or service issues and lead structured improvement actions to increase quality, predictability, supportability, and customer outcomes.
Maintain program artifacts including customer updates, RAID logs, release plans, enhancement roadmaps, stabilization plans, deployment readiness reviews, and defect remediation plans.
Support customer-facing governance, roadmap planning, risk management, release decisions, and prioritization of software improvements.
Coordinate lifecycle transition from project delivery into stable operational support and continual improvement.