Technical Manager - Zendesk ( 6 months contractual role)

At Nielsen, we are passionate about our work to power a better media future for all people by providing powerful insights that drive client decisions and deliver extraordinary results. Our talented, global workforce is dedicated to capturing audience engagement with content - wherever and whenever it’s consumed. Together, we are proudly rooted in our deep legacy as we stand at the forefront of the media revolution. When you join Nielsen, you will join a dynamic team committed to excellence, perseverance, and the ambition to make an impact together. We champion you, because when you succeed, we do too. We enable your best to power our future.

Role Summary

We are seeking a high-impact Technical Program Manager (TPM) to lead the strategy, evolution, and technical stability of our Customer Experience (CX) ecosystem. Having completed a migration from Salesforce to Zendesk Enterprise, we are now building a proactive, automated, high-efficiency CRM.

In this role, you will serve as the "Enterprise Systems & AI Product Owner." You will lead a team of two Zendesk Specialists, collaborate directly with enterprise clients to scope API integrations, and drive cross-functional engineering projects. You will be responsible for turning Zendesk into an AI-enabled workspace-deploying Zendesk Copilot, AI Agents for deflection, Zendesk AutoQA, Zendesk WFM, Glean Enterprise Search, and Gemini LLM integrations.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic AI Ecosystem & Native Zendesk Optimization

• Autonomous AI Deflection: Build, optimize, and oversee Zendesk AI Agents (Bots) to increase self-service resolution rates for Tier-1 inquiries.

• Agent Copilot & Productivity: Architect and fine-tune Zendesk Copilot (Auto-Assist workflows, real-time ticket summarization, and suggested next actions) to reduce Average Handle Time (AHT) and cognitive load.

• 100% Automated Quality Governance: Established Zendesk AutoQA scorecards and automated grading logic to continuously evaluate 100% of human and bot interactions, using sentiment analysis to flag churn risks and coaching opportunities.

• Workforce Management (WFM): Oversee Zendesk WFM (Tymeshift) configuration to transition from reactive staffing to data-driven, predictive capacity planning.

Platform Architecture & Tool Integrations (Glean / Gemini)

• Enterprise AI & Search Readiness: Partner with engineering and data teams to connect enterprise search tools (Glean) directly into Zendesk so agents can search across Confluence, Drive, and internal tools from a single workspace.

• Gemini LLM Workflows: Build data pipelines and API hooks to connect Gemini/LLMs for predictive retention modeling, automated drafts, and custom object field enrichment.

• Internal Tool Middleware: Oversee integrations between Zendesk, internal ERPs, product databases, and middleware (e.g., Webhooks) to create a single 360-degree CRM workspace.

Customer API Discovery & Developer Experience

• External Client Solutions: Interface directly with strategic business clients and account executives to gather technical requirements for direct API access, custom webhooks, and dedicated customer portal integrations.

• Developer Experience: Partner with internal software engineers to maintain clean, secure, rate-managed, and well-documented Zendesk REST APIs for customer usage.

Governance, Stability & Knowledge Architecture

• Environment Governance: Establish strict Sandbox-to-Production release pipelines, manage API rate limits, audit trigger loops, and ensure compliance (GDPR/Data Privacy).

• Knowledge Architecture (KCS): Lead a Knowledge-Centered Service strategy to consolidate company-wide documentation into a structured source of truth indexed within Zendesk.

• Team Leadership: Directly manage and mentor 2 Zendesk Specialists, managing sprint planning, task prioritization, and platform issue triage.

• 5+ years in Technical Program Management, Systems Engineering, or CX Platform Ownership.

• Zendesk Enterprise Mastery: Demonstrated expertise in architecting complex Zendesk instances, including Sandbox environments, Custom Objects, Omnichannel Routing, Copilot, AI Agents (Bots), AutoQA, and WFM.

• Integration & API Technical Depth: Proven experience with REST APIs, Webhooks, JSON, OAuth, Postman, and middleware integration tools (Workato, Zapier, n8n).

• AI & Search Engines: Hands-on experience or technical project delivery involving Enterprise Search (e.g., Glean, Coveo) and LLMs (e.g., Google Gemini, OpenAI).

• Client Engagement: Ability to run discovery meetings directly with tech teams to translate business needs into clear technical specifications.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Zendesk Certified Systems Architect.

• Demonstrated track record implementing Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) principles across multi-department teams.

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