Staff Technical Program Manager - AI/ML

PlayStation Global•Austin, TX

1d•$206,800 - $310,200

About The Position

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), the company behind the PlayStation brand, is seeking a Staff Technical Program Manager for its AI/ML Engineering organization in Austin, Texas. The organization builds and operates large-scale machine learning systems that support PlayStation experiences, including personalization, recommendations, experimentation, and trust and safety. Its work spans applied science, AI, ML infrastructure, and engineering, and includes designing, training, deploying, and continuously evaluating production systems for a global user base. In this role, you will guide the delivery of AI and ML products and experiences in an agile environment, working across Engineering, Product, Design, applied science, and data teams. You will own delivery roadmaps from model concept through training, deployment, and post-launch monitoring; align partners on goals and tradeoffs; manage dependencies and risks; and keep technical and non-technical stakeholders informed. The position also involves working with vendors and third-party tools that support ML delivery.

Requirements

At least 7 years of experience as a technical program manager, including at least 3 years specifically delivering AI/ML or applied data science programs.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
Working fluency in the ML lifecycle, including the ability to understand whether deployment blockers relate to data quality, infrastructure, or model performance and ask appropriate questions.
Track record of running distributed, cross-timezone engineering programs end to end.
Demonstrated ability to drive decisions among senior technical stakeholders without formal authority.
Experience managing day-to-day execution for agile/Scrum teams, including sprint planning, backlog health, and velocity tracking.
Strong written and verbal communication skills for highly technical and executive or non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

Gaming experience.
Direct experience in the relevant AI/ML domain, such as trust and safety, personalization, recommendation, or experimentation.
Hands-on software development background.
Experience with ML infrastructure tooling, such as feature stores, experimentation platforms, model registries, or MLOps pipelines.
Prior work directly under or alongside engineering leadership.
Demonstrated curiosity and continued learning about new AI/ML techniques and tooling.

Responsibilities

Own the delivery roadmap for one or more production AI/ML systems, from model concept through training, deployment, and post-launch monitoring.
Define success criteria with business partners before delivery begins.
Partner with applied scientists, Data Engineering, and ML Engineering to translate model performance targets, including accuracy, latency, and cost per inference, into plans with milestones and dependencies.
Align engineering, applied science, product, and data analytics teams on scope, tradeoffs, and sequencing when priorities are ambiguous or contested.
Track post-launch model and system health, adoption, drift, cost, and incident rates, and drive remediation when metrics degrade.
Manage cross-team and cross-timezone dependencies for distributed systems and ML teams, surfacing schedule risks early.
Manage vendor and third-party tooling relationships related to ML delivery, including labeling, compute, and evaluation tooling, as well as production readiness and issue tracking.
Communicate program status, risks, and tradeoffs in actionable terms for non-technical stakeholders and credible terms for technical stakeholders.
Identify and resolve conflicts between technical approaches or team priorities, escalating only issues that require executive input.
Manage day-to-day execution for agile/Scrum teams, including sprint planning, backlog health, and velocity tracking.