Program Manager, Intake & Portfolio Management

Role Description

This is not a typical project management role. As Project Manager for People Operations Intake & Portfolio, you will own the systems, processes, and judgment layer that determines what the Partners, Operations & Insights (POI) organization works on — and in what order. You will be the connective tissue between the People team's ambitions and POI's capacity, serving as the first point of contact for all work requests flowing into POI's four core teams: People Solutions, People Data Analytics & Research (PDAR), People Partners, and Employee Relations & HR Compliance.

You will build and run Stripe's POI intake and prioritization process end-to-end — from designing the intake experience for requestors, to triaging and evaluating incoming Jira tickets, to facilitating prioritization conversations with POI and People team leaders. As this function matures, you will expand into a broader portfolio intelligence role: the key strategic partner to all People team requestors, ensuring that the organization's most limited resource — team capacity — is always directed at the highest-priority work.

Critically, you will also build an AI agent to power and scale this work. You will design, iterate on, and deploy an intelligent intake assistant that helps with automated scoping, duplicate request detection, time commitment estimation, resourcing recommendations, and prioritization guidance — upleveling the quality of every intake interaction across the org.

What you'll do

• Own and operate the POI intake process end-to-end.
• Manage the Jira-based intake system, ensuring all incoming requests are triaged promptly, routed correctly, and tracked through their full lifecycle from submission to delivery.
• Serve as the primary intake partner for People team requestors.
• Act as a knowledgeable, approachable first point of contact who helps teams scope and frame requests well, setting clear expectations on timelines, effort, and likelihood of prioritization.
• Facilitate regular intake and portfolio cadences.
• Set cadence for POI Intake reviews, backlog grooming, and full roadmap reviews.
• Identify systemic patterns and surface insights to leadership.
• Synthesize trends across intake submissions to proactively flag capacity constraints, recurring themes, capability gaps, and emerging risks before they become blockers.
• Apply strategic judgment to prioritize the POI portfolio.
• Evaluate incoming tickets against People team SOKRs, the 3-Year Plan (3YP), and establish prioritization frameworks.
• Build and maintain portfolio visibility and capacity reporting.
• Develop dashboards and reporting that give POI leadership and People team stakeholders real-time insight into resource allocation, queue depth, and roadmap health.
• Participate in quarterly business reviews and annual planning cycles.
• Design, build, and continuously improve an AI agent for intake.
• Create an intelligent agent that automates and enhances the intake experience, that ultimately can be deployed to reduce time-to-decision and improve requestor experience at scale.
• Continuously improve the intake experience.
• Build and maintain requestor-facing documentation, submission guides, communication templates, and onboarding materials that reduce friction and improve ticket quality at submission.
• Partner with POI leaders and People team leaders on resourcing and prioritization conversations.
• Prepare and present portfolio data and recommendations to senior stakeholders, facilitating trade-off discussions with rigor, objectivity, and a clear point of view.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in project management, business operations, strategy, or consulting with experience navigating complex, matrixed organizations and managing competing priorities.
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, or significantly improving an intake, triage, or portfolio management process for a delivery team or operations function.
• Strong analytical and systems-thinking skills. Able to evaluate competing requests against strategic frameworks, make well-reasoned prioritization recommendations, and communicate trade-offs clearly to senior stakeholders.
• Proficiency in Jira or equivalent ticketing/project management tools. Comfortable with workflow configuration, ticket lifecycle management, capacity planning, and reporting.
• Proven experience using AI tools (LLMs, AI agents, or automation platforms) to streamline workflows, build lightweight productivity solutions, or automate repetitive operational tasks.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Able to translate ambiguous, incomplete requests into clear, actionable project briefs and present complex portfolio data accessibly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Proven ability to manage relationships with senior stakeholders (directors, VPs), including setting expectations, navigating pushback, and facilitating alignment conversations with confidence.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous environments where the work is not always well-defined. Able to independently identify the right approach and establish meaningful success metrics.
• Collaborative, low-ego working style. Able to operate as a strategic partner and trusted advisor rather than a decision-maker, earning credibility through rigor and good judgment.
• At least 2 years of experience working within or closely alongside an HR, People, or equivalent internal operations team.

Preferred qualifications

• Hands-on experience building AI agents or automation workflows using no-code/low-code tooling.
• Experience with prompt engineering, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) concepts, or designing human-in-the-loop workflows for AI-assisted processes.
• Background in portfolio management, demand management, or capacity planning, including experience with prioritization frameworks (RICE, WSJF, OKR-alignment scoring, or similar).
• Experience with change management frameworks (e.g., Prosci ADKAR® Model) and designing adoption strategies for new processes or tooling.
• Familiarity with HR systems (e.g., Workday, Greenhouse, Retool) and People team workflows.
• Experience building portfolio dashboards or capacity reports using tools like Tableau, Looker, Google Sheets, or similar.
• Experience building and deploying process documentation, requestor-facing guides, or enablement materials that improve submission quality and reduce intake friction.
• Familiarity with data privacy and compliance considerations relevant to employee data, particularly in the context of AI tools and automated workflows.
• Experience using AI tools to increase personal and team productivity.
• Advanced proficiency in Google Workspace (Sheets, Docs, Slides) and Mac OS.