Senior Technical Program Manager - Productivity Engineering

About the Technical Program Management Team

Technical Program Management is a collaborative, engaging team with a high motor and strong domain and technical expertise. We partner with engineering and teams across the business to drive discovery, prioritization, implementation, improvement, and ongoing management of high-impact technical solutions and programs. It’s our mission to help all of Thumbtack scale and get more done through technology and cross-functional alignment.

About the Role

How engineers write software is changing fast. AI-assisted and agentic development workflows are reshaping how code gets written, reviewed, tested, and deployed—and the platform infrastructure underneath all of it has to evolve just as quickly. CI/CD, build systems, code review, observability, developer tooling, cloud dev environments, and service reliability are the foundation that determines how fast and how well product engineering can ship.

We’re looking for a Senior TPM who leads from the front—someone who can credibly see around corners, participate in architectural planning and design, and ensure platform investments actually land with the engineers who depend on them. You’ll own this program across Developer Experience, Client Infrastructure, Backend Infrastructure, and Site Reliability Engineering. In partnership with those teams, you’ll drive the strategy, coordination, and execution needed to turn ambitious infrastructure plans into high-impact, widely adopted outcomes.

What you'll do 

• Own and define end-to-end program management for the 50+ members of the Productivity Engineering team. Your program extends across DevEx, Client Infrastructure, Backend Infrastructure, and Site Reliability Engineering - from roadmap planning through execution and adoption.
• Drive complex cross-team programs such as large-scale platform migrations and tooling adoptions across multi-quarter timelines.
• Define success through developer adoption and productivity impact — run feedback loops using frameworks like DORA, SPACE, and GetDX to keep the roadmap grounded in real needs.
• Manage migrations as a program: develop playbooks, secure partner commitments, phase rollouts, and track progress across multi-quarter efforts.
• Drive AI developer tooling strategy and adoption, including agentic workflow enablement, tool consolidation, and ROI measurement.
• Own the Platform Engineering team's Roadmap and OKR planning cycles, and Business Rhythms to ensure successful execution and OKR attainment.
• Manage stakeholder alignment across engineering leadership, ensuring program visibility, clear prioritization trade-offs, and sustained momentum on strategic bets.

In order to be successful, you must bring

• 5+ years in Technical Program Management within platform engineering, developer experience, or infrastructure, including leading multi-team migrations or platform rollouts that span multiple quarters and require broad organizational coordination.
• Strong technical fluency across CI/CD, build systems, code review tooling, microservices, containerization, observability, and cloud-native platforms.
• Fluency in the AI developer tooling landscape, including coding assistants, agentic workflows, cloud dev environments, and the infrastructure that supports them.
• Track record of driving adoption of internal tools and platforms, with an instinct for measuring success through developer satisfaction and usage—not just delivery—and prioritizing accordingly.
• Experience with agile program management, OKR/roadmap planning, and portfolio prioritization across multiple engineering teams.
• Excellent communication skills with a track record of driving alignment in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

Expected salary ranges

• For candidates living in Ontario and British Columbia, the expected salary range for the role is currently $145,400 - $188,100.

Actual offered salaries will vary and will be based on various factors, such as calibrated job level, qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role.

Note: Thumbtack uses AI tools to support our resume screening process. However, our Recruiting team’s expertise and judgment guide hiring decisions.