Senior Program Delivery Manager

Senior Program Delivery Manager

Applause is seeking an experienced delivery leader to oversee a complex portfolio of digital quality services for a strategic enterprise customer. This person will serve as the senior connection point between customer stakeholders and Applause's delivery organization, ensuring that testing programs are well governed, properly resourced, measurable, and aligned with agreed business outcomes.

The Senior Program Delivery Manager will provide unified oversight across testing workstreams, lead a team of Localization Quality Account Managers (LQAMs), and partner with Testing Services, Account Management, Community Operations, Product, and other internal teams. The role is accountable for the quality, consistency, and business value of Applause-delivered services.

This position partners closely with the customer's designated internal program owner. Customer-side decisions—including internal strategy, policy, prioritization, organizational alignment, and program ownership—remain with the customer. The Senior Program Delivery Manager ensures that Applause understands those decisions and translates them into an effective service-delivery strategy.

This is a remote position with limited travel.

Responsibilities:

Program and Service Delivery

• Own the overall governance and delivery health of a large, multifaceted digital quality engagement.
• Provide coordinated oversight across relevant Applause testing services, including localization-related quality initiatives.
• Translate customer objectives and testing requirements into executable service plans, workstreams, milestones, and measurable outcomes.
• Establish clear ownership, operating procedures, escalation paths, and decision-making frameworks across the engagement.
• Ensure that deliverables, schedules, service levels, testing coverage, and customer expectations are consistently managed.
• Anticipate delivery risks, dependencies, capacity constraints, and changes in customer demand; create and drive mitigation plans.
• Maintain clear boundaries between Applause-delivered services and customer-owned responsibilities, escalating scope ambiguity or conflicting expectations when necessary.
• Build a resilient operating model with documented processes, distributed ownership, and appropriate backup coverage.

Team Leadership

• Lead and coordinate a team of LQAMs responsible for day-to-day delivery across assigned workstreams.
• Establish clear roles, work allocation, performance expectations, communication standards, and escalation responsibilities.
• Coach team members on delivery strategy, customer communication, risk management, and executive-level value articulation.
• Balance resources and capacity across workstreams while maintaining continuity during periods of change, leave, or shifting priorities.
• Promote shared accountability and consistent delivery practices across the broader account team.

Governance, Reporting, and Business Insights

• Establish and manage the engagement's operating cadence, including delivery reviews, stakeholder updates, risk reviews, and executive governance.
• Ensure that program reporting is accurate, timely, consistent, and supported by reliable data.
• Monitor and communicate service performance through meaningful KPIs, including testing coverage, delivery progress, quality trends, utilization, risks, and business outcomes.
• Lead preparation for quarterly business reviews and other executive-level presentations.
• Turn testing and delivery data into clear recommendations, insights, and decision-support for customer and Applause leadership.
• Ensure that action items, decisions, risks, and dependencies are documented and followed through to completion.

Stakeholder and Partner Management

• Develop trusted relationships with customer stakeholders while representing Applause's responsibilities, capabilities, and commitments clearly.
• Partner with the customer's internal program lead to align Applause delivery with customer-defined priorities.
• Coordinate Applause Account Management, Testing Services, Community Operations, Product, Engineering, and other internal teams around a unified delivery strategy.
• Manage dependencies involving external partners or vendors when they affect Applause service delivery.
• Provide a clear escalation point for delivery challenges, cross-functional dependencies, and stakeholder concerns.
• Communicate effectively across operational, technical, and executive audiences.

Account Health & Continuous Improvement

• Evaluate engagement health and recommend changes to delivery models, testing strategy, team structure, or resource allocation.
• Identify opportunities to increase service value, testing effectiveness, and operational efficiency.
• Partner with Account Management on scope management, renewals, and appropriate expansion opportunities.
• Capture repeatable practices and contribute them to Applause delivery standards.
• Reduce operational complexity and key-person dependency through documentation, standardization, and thoughtful delegation.

Measures of Success

Success in this role will be demonstrated through:

• Consistent achievement of delivery commitments and service levels.
• Strong customer confidence in Applause's delivery organization.
• Accurate, decision-ready reporting and reliable executive-review preparation.
• Clear accountability across Applause, customer, and partner teams.
• Early identification and effective mitigation of delivery risks.
• Healthy utilization, capacity planning, and resource continuity.
• Effective leadership and development of the LQAM team.
• Measurable improvements in testing value, quality coverage, and operational efficiency.
• Appropriate separation between Applause service ownership and the customer's internal program responsibilities.

Essential Skills:

• Strong service-delivery and program-governance leadership in complex enterprise environments.
• Demonstrated ability to lead senior delivery professionals through direct or matrixed management.
• Advanced program-management capabilities, including planning, scope management, capacity forecasting, risk mitigation, change management, and executive governance.
• Working knowledge of software testing, digital quality practices, and managed testing services.
• Familiarity with localization quality programs and globally distributed delivery models.
• Ability to translate technical and operational data into compelling business insights.
• Excellent executive communication, facilitation, and presentation skills.
• Strong judgment when navigating ambiguous ownership, competing stakeholder needs, or changing priorities.
• Ability to build trusted customer relationships while maintaining clear organizational and commercial boundaries.
• Proficiency with spreadsheets, presentation tools, reporting platforms, and remote collaboration systems.
• A solutions-oriented approach with a strong commitment to customer, team, and delivery success.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• Eight or more years of experience in enterprise program delivery, implementation, consulting, managed services, or customer engagement leadership.
• Five or more years of technical program or service-delivery management experience within a digital product, software, testing, or technology-services environment.
• Experience overseeing multiple interdependent workstreams within a large enterprise engagement.
• Experience managing or leading distributed, cross-functional teams.
• Experience presenting program performance, risks, and business value to senior and executive stakeholders.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience with digital quality, crowdsourced testing, or testing-as-a-service models.
• Experience supporting global products or localization-related testing programs.
• Experience designing governance and reporting structures for complex strategic accounts.
• Experience leading a program through organizational transition or operating-model change.

Compensation:

Beyond Applause's award-winning culture, our employee-centric benefits and competitive compensation strategy are designed to support your physical and mental well-being, promote work-life balance, and fuel your professional growth.

The salary range for this position is $160,000 - $200,000.

What Makes Applause a Great Place to Work:

Applause is a place where everyone belongs and where we believe everyone deserves the exceptional. We continue to celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive, equitable environment for our employees. If you believe you require a reasonable accommodation und.er any of the legally protected characteristics, please click here to complete an accommodation request. Please note, Applause will only review requests for applications that have been submitted. We will review your qualifications and follow up with you regarding your request if your qualifications meet our current needs.