Senior Program Delivery Manager

• Proven success delivering for high-profile, executive-level audiences including senior leaders, C-suite, board-level participants.

Department: SEPO Academic Delivery

Reports To: Associate Director, Academic Delivery

Position Type: Permanent – Full-time (People Leader)

Location: Remote, US – Boston or New England area

A bout Emeritus

Emeritus is committed to teaching the skills of the future by making high-quality education accessible and affordable to individuals, companies, and governments around the world. Emeritus collaborates with more than 80 top-tier universities across the United States, Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, India, and China.

Emeritus' short courses, degree programs, professional certificates, and senior executive programs help individuals learn new skills and transform their lives, companies, and organizations. Its unique model combines state-of-the-art technology, curriculum innovation, and hands-on instruction from senior faculty, mentors, and coaches and has educated more than 350,000 learners across 80+ countries.

About The Role

Reporting to the Associate Director, the Senior Program Delivery Manager (Senior PDM) is a senior individual contributor who owns delivery of the largest, most complex program in the senior executive (SEPO) portfolio, a senior executive learning journey serving hundreds of senior leaders and CXOs worldwide.

This role is for a deeply experienced program leader who can run a program of this scale and visibility end-to-end, while setting the bar for learner experience across SEPO. As a people manager, you will hire and develop a team of Program Delivery Managers, sharing playbooks, coaching through complex situations, and helping elevate delivery excellence across the portfolio.

You will work with a great deal of autonomy, operate at the intersection of university partners, executive-level learners, and a global cross-functional team, and shape how Emeritus delivers world-class executive education at scale.

How You Will Make An Impact

Team Management and Enablement

• Serve as a people manager for a team of Program Delivery Managers dedicated to a portfolio within the SEPO line of business—build a culture of collaboration and open communication, develop individual capabilities, and provide feedback to help the team grow and improve.
• Influence and help shape delivery standards, SOPs, and quality playbooks used across the PDM team.
• Partner with the Associate Director on hiring and onboarding new PDMs.
• Lead knowledge-sharing forums so that innovations you develop scale across the portfolio.

Program Leadership And Delivery

• Own the end-to-end delivery of a portfolio of senior executive programs: multi-cohort, 6-12-month learning journeys with hundreds of senior leaders and CXOs enrolled.
• Lead every phase of the program lifecycle: pre-launch readiness, kickoff, live sessions, capstones, electives, and on-campus programming.
• Own program health against a high bar across completion rate, engagement, learner satisfaction, and escalation resolution.
• Manage program economics including budget, course leader spend, and cost-to-deliver, partnering with leadership on forecasting and reporting.
• Act as the owner when something is off-track, surfacing risks early and driving resolution across functions.

Learner Experience And Engagement

• Set and uphold the learner experience standard for executive-level cohorts so that every touchpoint reflects the expectations of senior leaders and CXOs.
• Identify at-risk learners early and personally drive targeted interventions to keep the cohort engaged and progressing.
• Systematically capture learner feedback and translate insights into program improvements.

Stakeholder & Partner Management

• Build trusted relationships with the university partner, faculty, and senior internal stakeholders (Outreach, Admissions, Design, Product, University Partnerships).
• Serve as the day-to-day Emeritus lead with the partner institution for this program, where executive-level partners expect executive-level responsiveness.
• Attend on-campus events (4-6 per year) and meet with partner staff and faculty to provide high-touch support for delivery needs.
• Provide proactive, data-backed updates on program health, risks, and wins and drive alignment on key decisions.
• Deliver detailed feedback on program content, faculty experience, and platform to help internal partners continuously improve.

Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement

• Oversee the full operational layer of the program including program setup, participant onboarding, program logistics, live session production, and completion status.
• Identify and lead cross-functional process improvement initiatives that reduce manual work, improve delivery efficiency, and make the learner experience more scalable.
• Partner with Technology and Product to influence the platform roadmap based on frontline learner and team needs.
• Codify what works on this strategic program into reusable playbooks for the rest of the portfolio.

Data & Performance Analytics

• Own the metrics that matter for this program across engagement, completion rates, escalation resolution, and cost-to-deliver.
• Use data to identify trends, prioritize improvements, and report on program health to senior leadership.
• Review reporting and dashboards and act on the right signals in real time.

Required Qualifications

What You’ll Bring

• 6+ years of experience in program delivery, customer success, learning operations, or executive client management with a track record of owning complex, high-stakes programs end-to-end.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.
• Proven success delivering for high-profile, executive-level audiences including senior leaders, C-suite, board-level participants.
• Readiness to lead a team of individual contributors
• Exceptional program management and operational discipline with comfort juggling multiple complex workstreams simultaneously at a large scale.
• Fluency with data to drive decisions, diagnose issues, and improve outcomes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with comfort representing Emeritus to senior external stakeholders, including university partners and faculty.
• Strong influence and coaching skills with the ability to shape outcomes and elevate peers without having formal authority over them.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in executive education, higher education, EdTech, or online learning delivery.
• 1-2 years of experience as a people manager.
• Experience building trusting working relationships with US university staff and faculty.
• Familiarity with learning management systems such as Canvas.
• Event management and community-building experience.
• Track record of launching new programs, markets, or large-scale initiatives.

Key Competencies

• Leadership presence with ownership of complex, high-visibility programs
• Learner-obsessed with a passion for executive-level customer delight
• Strong program management and operational rigor at scale
• Data-driven decision maker
• Cross-functional collaborator and influencer who leads without authority
• People developer who elevates the people around them
• Growth mindset with a drive to build, improve, and raise the bar
• Excellent communicator across cultures, functions, and seniority levels
• Effective executor in a fast-paced, high-growth, global organization

Emeritus provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

In Press

• emeritus harvard business school: Edtech unicorn Emeritus story now a Harvard Business School case study - The Economic Times (indiatimes.com)

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