Founding Technical Program Manager

Valence•San Francisco, CA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Valence has built the only AI native coaching platform for enterprise, offering personalized, expert, and human-like guidance and support to any leader or employee. We’re not just talking about the future of work — we’re building it now, with the most innovative Fortune 500 companies across healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and technology. Our focus is on the problems that actually decide whether AI changes how organizations operate — the ones with no playbook, no obvious answers, and no guarantee of success. If you want to be part of the small group that defines how AI transforms the future at a global scale, this is your chance. And this isn’t for everyone. We’re not looking for people who want predictability or incremental progress. We only want those who are restless at the edge of what’s possible, who get bored when things feel “done,” and who are driven to redefine what AI can mean for leaders, companies, and the world. Because at Valence, the work worth doing is the kind that redefines work itself. About the Role Valence is hiring a Technical Program Manager to sit at the intersection of our engineering org, enterprise customers, and commercial teams. This is a builder role — there is no playbook to inherit, only one to create. We're open to two orientations for this hire. One track focuses on the commercial boundary: owning enterprise deployments from deal scoping through go-live, partnering with Sales and CS to pressure-test commitments before contracts are signed, and building the playbooks that make implementation repeatable at scale. The other focuses on internal engineering execution: owning the operating rhythm of the eng org, making delivery predictable, and giving leadership clear visibility into what's in flight across teams. If you're a strong fit for either, we want to hear from you.

Requirements

5–8+ years of TPM, technical implementation, or engineering program management in enterprise B2B SaaS or AI
Proven ability to manage at the boundary between commercial and engineering teams — you understand both worlds and can translate between them
Strong written communication — crisp program docs, status updates, and executive summaries
Comfort holding engineering teams accountable on scope and timeline without being an IC yourself
Influence without authority is your primary tool — everything moves through trust and clarity, not title
AI/ML fluency: comfortable in conversations about LLM pipelines, model deployment, and data infrastructure — you don't build it, but you can track it

Nice To Haves

Background in HR tech, learning & development, or AI/coaching platforms
Prior software engineering experience
Experience navigating enterprise security and compliance requirements (SSO, SOC 2, GDPR)
SQL or Python proficiency for pulling your own data when dashboards don't answer the question

Responsibilities

Own complex, cross-functional programs end-to-end — whether that's an enterprise deployment or an engineering delivery work stream — coordinating across Engineering, CS, Sales, and leadership
Identify structural problems at team or organizational boundaries and fix them systemically, not one-off
Build lightweight processes and playbooks where none exist; make repeatable what can be repeated
Translate ambiguous requirements — from customers or from product — into clear, sequenced engineering work with tradeoffs surfaced early
Run executive-facing reviews and status communications that decision-makers can actually act on
Own visibility infrastructure (roadmaps, dashboards, dependency tracking) so nothing critical falls through the cracks