What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Technical Program Manager || Seattle, Washington position at GDR Defense?
Role: Senior Technical Program Manager
Location: Seattle, Washington
Department: Commerce & Transactions
Experience:12 years in technical delivery or technology leadership, including 10 years leading complex technical programs
## Job Summary
This role will oversee strategic initiatives across checkout, payments, order management, fulfillment, returns, post-purchase experiences, and core commerce platforms. The ideal candidate will combine strong technical knowledge with exceptional program leadership skills to coordinate multiple engineering teams, manage architectural dependencies, mitigate risks, and deliver scalable, secure, and reliable technology solutions.
The Senior Technical Program Manager will partner with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Infrastructure, Data, and Operations teams to align technical execution with business objectives and drive successful enterprise-wide technology initiatives.
## Key Responsibilities
- Lead complex, cross-functional technical programs across commerce, payments, checkout, order management, fulfillment, and related platforms.
- Develop integrated program plans, delivery roadmaps, milestones, dependencies, and measurable business outcomes.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Architecture, and Operations leaders to define scope, priorities, technical strategies, and execution plans.
- Establish program governance, delivery frameworks, escalation processes, quality gates, and accountability mechanisms.
- Identify and mitigate technical risks, architectural dependencies, scalability limitations, security concerns, technical debt, and reliability issues.
- Coordinate API integrations, data contracts, event-driven workflows, end-to-end testing, performance validation, and security reviews.
- Ensure deployment readiness, rollback planning, production observability, operational handoffs, and post-launch stabilization.
- Translate complex technical concepts and architectural trade-offs into clear business impacts for senior leadership.
- Manage cross-team dependencies, competing priorities, delivery conflicts, and resource constraints.
- Drive platform modernization, cloud transformation, infrastructure improvements, resilience, and disaster-recovery initiatives.
- Monitor program health, delivery milestones, reliability metrics, risks, and business outcomes.
- Influence investment decisions involving platforms, infrastructure, tooling, and technical modernization.
- Improve technical program management processes, engineering governance, and delivery effectiveness.
## Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 12 years of experience in technical delivery, software engineering, technical program management, or technology leadership.
- 10 years of experience leading complex technical programs in retail, eCommerce, digital, or technology-driven organizations.
- Proven experience delivering large-scale initiatives across Product, Engineering, Architecture, Infrastructure, Data, and Operations.
- Strong understanding of commerce platforms, including checkout, payments, order management, fulfillment, shipping, returns, and post-purchase systems.
- Experience with API integrations, data contracts, event-driven architecture, and end-to-end transaction lifecycle management.
- Strong technical understanding of software development lifecycles, microservices, distributed systems, cloud platforms, system architecture, security, scalability, and performance engineering.
- Technical program management experience involving Java-based services, GraphQL, Node.js, React, Kubernetes, Kafka or comparable event-streaming technologies, and GitLab or similar CI/CD tools.
- Knowledge of DevSecOps, automated testing, deployment strategies, infrastructure as code, production observability, and operational readiness.
- Experience leading cloud transformation, platform modernization, resilience, and disaster-recovery initiatives.
- Strong Agile program management experience and proficiency with Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet, or similar tools.
- Excellent communication, executive stakeholder management, problem-solving, risk management, and cross-functional leadership skills.
- Demonstrated ability to establish governance models, manage dependencies, influence technical decisions, and deliver measurable business outcomes.
## Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in retail, eCommerce, omnichannel, supply chain, or digital commerce environments.
- Knowledge of checkout, payments, order orchestration, fulfillment, returns, and customer experience platforms.
- Experience supporting global technology organizations and large-scale enterprise transformation programs.
- PMP, SAFe, Scrum Master, or equivalent program management certification.
- Ability to work effectively in ambiguous, fast-paced environments and influence stakeholders across multiple organizational levels.
## Core Competencies
- Technical program and delivery leadership
- Commerce and payments technology
- Enterprise architecture and systems integration
- Risk, dependency, and stakeholder management
- Cloud transformation and platform modernization
- Agile delivery and technical governance
- Executive communication and strategic decision-making
- Reliability, scalability, security, and operational excellence