Staff Technical Program Manager
About Tekion:
Positively disrupting an industry that has not seen any innovation in over 50 years, Tekion has challenged the paradigm with the first and fastest cloud-native automotive platform that includes the revolutionary Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC) for retailers, Automotive Enterprise Cloud (AEC) for manufacturers and other large automotive enterprises and Automotive Partner Cloud (APC) for technology and industry partners. Tekion connects the entire spectrum of the automotive retail ecosystem through one seamless platform. The transformative platform uses cutting-edge technology, big data, machine learning, and AI to seamlessly bring together OEMs, retailers/dealers and consumers. With its highly configurable integration and greater customer engagement capabilities, Tekion is enabling the best automotive retail experiences ever. Tekion employs close to 3,000 people across North America, Asia and Europe.
Role Overview
We are seeking a Staff Technical Program Manager to own the cross-team delivery machinery for a 20-person AI native engineering organization. This is not a project coordination role — it is a technical program ownership role. You will maintain the master delivery plan across two Scrum teams and shared resources, track and resolve
cross-team dependencies (platform teams, ARC backend, OEM integrations), manage risk before it becomes a miss, and create the delivery transparency that allows Engineering, Product, and Executive leadership to make fast, informed decisions. The best TPMs are invisible when things go well and indispensable when they don't.
Key Responsibilities
• Own the master delivery plan: maintain the integrated roadmap across both Scrum teams, shared resources (Architect, ML, SDET), and external platform dependencies — with milestone-level clarity at all times.
• Track and resolve cross-team dependencies: Agentic Engine, Core Platform (Temporal, MCP Gateway, Component Framework), ARC backend (Kafka event contracts, API dependencies), Design (component specs), and external vendors (email/SMS providers).
• Run the delivery rhythm: sprint review calendar, cross-team sync cadence, dependency review meetings, and risk escalation forums — keeping the Director and VP Engineering informed without burying them in status updates.
• Identify, quantify, and manage delivery risks: surface blockers early, drive resolution with urgency, and maintain a live risk register with mitigation owners and timelines.
• Own cross-team technical communication: translate engineering status into language that Product, Business, and Executive stakeholders can act on — and translate business urgency back into engineering trade-off decisions.
• Drive the release process: define release criteria, coordinate go/no-go decisions with Engineering, QA (Staff SDET), and Product, and manage production deployments across services.
• Manage the dependency interface to the T1 Agentic Engine team: track which Intent, Skill, Policy, and MCP tool registrations are ready, which are blocked, and what the critical path impact is.
• Continuously improve the delivery system: identify bottlenecks in the engineering process, drive retrospectives, and implement changes that sustainably increase throughput and quality.
Skills & Qualifications
• 12+ years of technical program management experience, with at least 3 years at Staff level managing multi team programs at SaaS or platform companies.
• Strong technical depth: able to read architecture diagrams, understand Kafka dependency graphs, evaluate API contract blockers, and participate credibly in engineering design discussions.
• Proven experience managing complex, multi-team delivery programs with many external dependencies — including platform dependencies outside your direct control.
• Expert facilitation of engineering delivery rituals: sprint planning, dependency reviews, release gates, post mortems, and architecture syncs.
• Deep understanding of AI-native product delivery: what makes AI system delivery different from traditional software (eval requirements, model versioning, non-deterministic outputs, golden dataset dependencies).
• Excellent written communication: can produce a crisp, executive-readable status update that tells the truth clearly and drives decisions.
• Strong stakeholder management across Engineering, Product, Design, and Executive levels — comfortable managing up, across, and down.
Good to Have
• Experience managing delivery programs that involve both Java microservices and Python AI/ML engineering teams simultaneously.
• Familiarity with agentic AI platform concepts: intent registries, MCP tools, skill/policy authoring, and eval frameworks — enough to track technical dependency status accurately.
• Background in automotive retail technology or dealer management systems.
• Prior experience working in a US-India distributed engineering organization.
Tekion is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, victim of violence or having a family member who is a victim of violence, the intersectionality of two or more protected categories, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
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