Technical Program Manager, Cloud, Data & Validation Platforms

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

About The Position

You are a force of nature, thriving on bringing order to chaos, driving clarity where there is ambiguity, and pushing complex, cross-functional efforts across the finish line. As part of Zipline’s Program Management team, you will own execution for the platforms that power iteration speed and fleet scale, including cloud/on-prem infrastructure, data pipelines and artifacts, CI/CD and developer productivity, simulation, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) validation. Your programs may range from onboard logging and data ingestion to large-scale load testing, build system modernization, and raising the fidelity/throughput of validation environments. You will partner closely with infrastructure, data, autonomy, validation, and security teams to maintain and enhance engineering velocity.

Requirements

Over 6 years of experience in technical program management (or equivalent) leading platform, data, or infrastructure initiatives serving multiple engineering teams.
Strong understanding of modern software lifecycles, CI/CD, and developer workflow best practices.
Proven ability to drive complex cross-team deliveries with clear prioritization, sequencing, and risk management.
Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence outcomes across diverse technical stakeholders.
Analytical, data-driven approach; comfortable defining and improving key metrics, including build times, data latency, and environment reliability and availability targets.
Adaptability and resilience; experience introducing and scaling new processes and platforms.
Familiarity with telemetry/log pipelines, distributed systems, cost/performance tradeoffs in mixed cloud/on-prem, simulation/HIL environments, and safety-critical software.

Nice To Haves

Experience as a Software Engineer working on the above is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

Own execution for platform programs: Define program goals, sequence priorities across cloud/on-prem, data platforms, CI/CD, sim, and HIL — and align with company objectives.
Drive cross-functional execution: Coordinate with infra, data, autonomy, validation and product to deliver reliable pipelines, robust environments, and measurable reliability and performance targets.
Measure and improve engineering velocity: Reduce build/test cycle times, improve data freshness and reliability, and increase simulation/HIL throughput and representativeness.
Engage across the full lifecycle: From platform architecture and security reviews through rollout plans, migration/change management, and operational handoffs.
Facilitate strategic decision-making: Lead tradeoff discussions on performance/cost/reliability, on-prem vs. cloud, and “build vs. buy” for tooling.
Communicate program progress: Provide crisp visibility on timelines, risks, and outcomes to leadership and partner teams.
Build and evolve program processes: Define metrics, run postmortems and retros, and harden roadmaps that scale with the fleet.