Sr. Technical Program Manager

About the Company:

Netspend Corporation is a global, vertically-integrated financial services and technology company dedicated to the delivery of innovative financial empowerment solutions to consumers worldwide. Netspend's financial products and services span prepaid, debit, cross-border payments, and loyalty solutions for consumers and enterprise partners.
Netspend provides prepaid and debit account solutions that connect customers with secure, convenient access to global payment networks so they can manage their money and make everyday purchases. With a nationwide U.S. retail network, customers can purchase and reload Netspend products at 130,000 reload points and over 100,000 distributing locations.
Since our founding in 1999 by industry pioneers, Netspend products have processed billions of dollars in transaction volume and served millions of customers worldwide. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with employees worldwide.

About the role

We are hiring a Senior Technical Program Manager with 10+ years of experience to lead complex, cross-team engineering programs built on Java. You will be an enabler for the engineering teams who own delivery — bringing structure, visibility and alignment from scoping through launch — while engaging deeply with engineers on architecture, dependencies and technical trade-offs.

This role sits at the intersection of engineering and execution. You will be the person who turns ambiguous goals into a clear plan, keeps multiple teams moving in step, and gives leadership an honest, early view of risk.

Experience: 10+ years

Key responsibilities

Program enablement

• Enable large, multi-quarter programs spanning several engineering teams, partnering with the engineering managers who own delivery from charter through launch and post-launch review.
• Build integrated program plans with milestones, critical path, dependencies and resourcing; keep them current as reality changes.
• Facilitate the program operating rhythm: planning, standups or syncs, status reporting, release readiness and retrospectives.
• Coach teams on Agile (Scrum/Kanban) practices and help adapt the delivery model to fit team size, risk and deadlines.

Technical partnership

• Engage with engineers on system design, Java/JVM service architecture, APIs and integration points well enough to challenge estimates and spot hidden dependencies.
• Partner with architects and tech leads on technical debt, scalability, performance and migration plans, and make the trade-offs visible to stakeholders.
• Review design documents and help translate technical constraints into scope, timeline and risk decisions.
• Work with DevOps and QA on CI/CD, release management, environments and quality gates.

Risk, governance and communication

• Identify risks and blockers early, maintain a RAID log, and help owners drive mitigation, escalating when needed.
• Communicate program status, decisions and trade-offs clearly to engineering leaders, product, and senior executives.
• Define and track delivery metrics such as predictability, velocity, defect trends and milestone health.
• Facilitate scope-change decisions, track budgets, and keep cross-functional partners (Product, Security, Compliance, Operations) aligned.

Process and people

• Improve engineering and program management practices across the organization.
• Mentor junior TPMs
• Coordinate with vendors where programs depend on them.

Required qualifications

Experience

• 10+ years in software delivery, with at least 5 years as a Technical Program Manager, Technical Project Manager or equivalent.
• A track record of enabling large programs involving 3+ engineering teams and multiple stakeholder groups.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Technical depth (Java)

• Strong working knowledge of Java-based systems — core Java concepts, Spring / Spring Boot and the JVM — enough to engage credibly with engineers; hands‑on coding is not required.
• Solid understanding of microservices, REST APIs, relational and NoSQL databases, and messaging systems such as Kafka.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS), containers (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI).
• Able to review design documents, follow technical debates, and ask the questions that surface real risk.

Project and program management

• Deep command of the full project lifecycle: initiation, planning, estimation, scheduling, execution, monitoring and closure.
• Strong practice in Agile and hybrid delivery, including sprint planning, release planning and dependency management at scale.
• Proficiency with tools such as Jira, Confluence, diagramming tool such as Lucid Chart
• Proven skill in risk management, scope control, budget tracking and stakeholder management.

Leadership and communication

• Clear, concise written and verbal communication, including executive-level status reporting.
• Able to influence without authority and resolve conflicts across teams.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to bring structure to it quickly.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities, with a results-oriented mindset and a commitment to delivering value to customers.

Preferred qualifications

• PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP, SAFe or Certified Scrum Master certification.
• Experience leading platform migrations, monolith-to-microservices transitions or cloud modernization programs.
• Domain experience in fintech, e-commerce, SaaS or another regulated, high-scale environment.
• Exposure to observability tools (Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, Grafana)
• Experience managing distributed teams across time zones.
• A Master's degree or MBA.

What success looks like in year one

• You have enabled 1–2 critical programs to hit key milestones on or near plan.
• Leadership has a single, trusted view of program health, risks and dependencies.
• Engineering teams see you as a technical peer who removes blockers rather than adds process.