Founding Technical Program Manager

Gc Ai • San Mateo, CA

20d • Remote

About The Position

GC AI is seeking its first Technical Program Manager to join at a pivotal moment of rapid growth. The company has experienced a 10x revenue increase in the past year and is shipping products quickly, leading to an increased number of projects. This role is crucial for establishing a clear system to track project progress, facilitate decision-making, and ensure reliable product delivery. The Technical Program Manager will be responsible for creating and implementing a process for moving work from conception to customer use, ensuring visibility into project status, risks, and timelines. This is a build-from-scratch opportunity where the individual will report to engineering leadership and collaborate with Engineering, Product, Marketing, Legal, Sales, and external partners. The role involves not just planning and status reporting, but also improving company-wide workflows, leading key launches, and developing necessary tools and automations.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience shipping complex software across multiple teams.
• Proven ability to build a new operational system, drive its adoption, and iterate on it over time.
• Experience building tools and automations, potentially including writing code, developing agents, connecting APIs, or creating initial versions of tools.
• Understanding of how AI products are developed, with the ability to discuss models, evaluations, data, APIs, speed, reliability, and associated shipping decisions with engineers.
• Ability to gain trust from engineers through deep understanding, insightful questions, and facilitating sound decision-making.
• Skill in explaining complex technical problems to leadership in simple terms, outlining decisions needed, options available, and consequences of delay.
• Proficiency in using data and conversations to identify root problems and guide teams toward solutions with both calm and urgency.
• Ability to build trust across diverse teams, even amidst changing plans, missed deadlines, or disagreements.
• A strong preference for building systems from scratch and thriving in ambiguous environments.

Nice To Haves

• Experience as the first PM, TPM, Chief of Staff, Engineering Operations Lead, or similar role at an early-stage company.
• Background as an engineer or experience leading work related to infrastructure, platforms, APIs, data systems, or distributed systems.
• Experience with model evaluations, data-quality systems, LLMs, or other aspects of AI product development.
• Experience helping multiple teams adopt a common internal platform, SDK, API, or workflow.
• Experience with enterprise software launches involving Legal, Security, Compliance, customers, or external partners.

Responsibilities

• Learn how work moves from an idea to a customer, identify bottlenecks, clarify ownership, and help teams close gaps.
• Maintain a clear overview of all major projects, assist teams in setting priorities, planning work order, and identifying conflicts or dependencies early.
• Establish and manage simple, effective project and launch reviews.
• Ensure timely decision-making and automate follow-ups where possible.
• Lead the company's most critical launches, proactively identify risks, and help teams make informed decisions regarding scope, quality, timing, and prioritization.
• Enhance the Launch Calendar and Calvin (launch intake agent) by using agents and automations to gather updates, identify risks, generate launch briefs, manage review processes, and notify relevant parties of plan changes.
• Aggregate information from tools like Notion, Slack, and Linear into a unified, clear view for leadership, highlighting project status, expected shipments, and areas needing support.
• Develop straightforward playbooks, decision logs, and dependency lists to preserve important project context.
• Ensure Marketing, Legal, Sales, customers, and external partners receive necessary information and adequate time prior to launches.
• Drive adoption of the systems built, measuring their effectiveness in saving time, removing blockers, and accelerating shipment velocity without introducing unnecessary overhead.

Benefits

• Distributed company with team members across North America and soon Europe.
• Investment in human connection through a hub model: regular coworking sessions, customer dinners, team and company offsites.
• Potential for up to 10% travel for team members not in a physical office location (more for customer-facing roles).
• Permanent offices planned in more hub cities as the company grows.
• Hiring across the United States and Canada.
• Equal opportunity employer committed to workplace diversity.
• Commitment to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with physical and mental disabilities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed