{"id":3360488,"url":"https://alion.io/job/robots-pencils-technical-program-manager","title":"Technical Program Manager","company":{"id":7662,"name":"Robots & Pencils","domain":"robotsandpencils.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/robots-and-pencils","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":83,"open_postings":9,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.667,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":34,"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"}},"role":"Product","role_family":"Product","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":180000,"max":215000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":215000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure DevOps","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Claude","optional":false},{"name":"Confluence","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"Jira","optional":false},{"name":"Scrum","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-27T18:12:52Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T09:10:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"Technical Program Manager\n3 days a week on-site in NYC or Mountain View, CA; ~20% client travel required. Company Overview Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there. We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship. Position Overview As a Technical Program Manager, you own the full arc of large, multi-workstream programs, from translating a client’s business goals into a technical plan through launch and the value it delivers afterward. You sit at the intersection of business and engineering: facilitating architecture and engineering discussions, shaping technical direction alongside our engineering leads, and keeping multiple distributed teams moving toward the same outcome. Why This Role Matters The biggest engagements Robots and Pencils takes on are enterprise AI, cloud, and agentic transformations with many teams, many stakeholders, and real money on the line. Technical Program Managers are what keep those programs from fragmenting. You can sit with a client executive in the morning and an engineering lead in the afternoon and make sure both are working toward the same business result. When priorities conflict, or risk shows up with limited information and a tight deadline, you frame the trade-off clearly and drive the decision, so our promise of production-ready AI holds at enterprise scale. What You’ll Do Program Leadership\nOwn end-to-end delivery of large-scale ($10M+) AI, digital, and cloud transformation programs, from strategy and roadmap through launch and realized business value\nTake large, complex programs and break them down into manageable, deliverable workstreams with clear ownership, sequencing, and dependencies\nDrive program schedules from design to launch across multiple concurrent Agile teams, keeping delivery managers and product managers aligned on one integrated plan\nDefine program-level KPIs and governance, using data to report program health and guide decisions across scope, timeline, budget, and quality\nTechnical Direction\nBridge business requirements and technical solutions, distilling customer needs into clear technical requirements and mapping each one back to the business outcome it serves\nFacilitate engineering and architecture discussions, and build a deep enough technical understanding of the products, across frontend and back-end technologies, to help drive the technical direction of the teams\nDecompose complex technical problems into actionable, deliverable solutions the teams can execute against\nContribute to technical documentation and define the documentation standards your programs follow\nAI Enablement\nOwn the AI Development Life Cycle (AIDLC) at the program level, and set the standard Senior Delivery Managers follow for standing it up across workstreams\nSet the program-wide definition of done for probabilistic and AI-driven features (evaluation thresholds, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, post-launch monitoring) and hold every workstream to it\nPartner with AI engineering leads on model risk, data readiness, evaluation strategy, and observability for agentic work, and translate technical uncertainty into a program plan and risk register the client can act on\nDefine what success looks like for AI-augmented delivery across the program (quality, rework, review overhead, and velocity, not just tests passed) and drive status visibility across complex AI-driven pipelines\nMake the call on when an agentic approach is the wrong tool for a client’s needs, weighing context management, latency, infrastructure, and cost, and defend that call to the client\nUse AI yourself every day, with tools like Claude, to accelerate planning, specifications, reporting, and stakeholder communication, and model that for the delivery leaders on your programs\nStakeholder Alignment & Communication\nServe as the senior program partner to client executives, building trust through transparency, consistency, and clear communication\nAnticipate bottlenecks before they land, provide escalation management, and make the trade-offs that balance business needs against technical constraints\nFacilitate and lead trade-off decisions with customers, stakeholders, and partner teams when priorities conflict, and manage escalations or misalignments whenever committed outcomes or quality are at risk\nCommunicate program schedules, progress, and business impact to stakeholders and senior leaders, so executives see ongoing value, not just status\nPartner with Client Partners to shape the follow-on work and expansion opportunities that grow out of the program\nLeadership & Influence\nLead and mentor the Senior Delivery Managers and Delivery Managers on your programs with concrete feedback and stretch opportunities\nThrive in an innovative environment where ambiguity and conflicting priorities are the norm, and create clarity for the teams around you\nShape R&P’s delivery practice, tools, and frameworks beyond your own programs\nAssess program staffing and capability gaps, and partner with Client Partners and leadership on staffing needs and high-potential talent\nConduct executive interviews and serve as an essential voice in go/no-go hiring decisions across the firm\nWhat You’ll Bring\n5+ years of experience leading multiple Agile teams (including Scrum Masters and Product Owners) concurrently or at scale\n5+ years of experience leading and delivering enterprise-level IT engagements\nProven track record leading large-scale ($10M+) AI, digital, or cloud transformation programs from strategy through to realized business value\nPractical application of frameworks (Well-Architected, Cloud Adoption Framework) to inform program decision-making and solution governance\nStrong technical foundation: able to engage credibly on architecture, frontend and back-end technologies, and cloud-native design, and to decompose complex technical problems into deliverable solutions; ability to distill customer needs into technical requirements and functional specifications, map them to business outcomes\nTrack record leading programs where AI/ML or agentic capability was core to the solution, including how you managed model risk, evaluation, and client expectations, and the ability to set program-wide standards for evaluation, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and monitoring\nDemonstrable daily use of AI tools (e.g., Claude) to enhance planning, specifications, reporting, and documentation\nExperience with delivery and engineering tooling (e.g., Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines)\nComfort operating in ambiguity, and the credibility with clients to bring growth conversations forward with Client Partners\nHelpful Extras and Unique Skills\nVertical depth in one or more of Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, or Manufacturing\nExperience delivering agentic, AI co-worker, or app0lied-AI initiatives in enterprise\nComprehensive knowledge of AWS services, architectures, and best practices, applied to guide technical decisions and strategic planning\nOwned the end-to-end delivery of complex, multi-workstream agentic AI transformation programs\nPrior career experience in client-facing roles (engagement management, consulting, account leadership) that informs growth conversations\nYou’ll Do Well Here if You Are\nA doer. You see something broken and fix it. You'd rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.\nA fast learner who knows you don't know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You're senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.\nDirect in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You'd rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.\nObsessed with craft. You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don't put your name on work you wouldn't stand behind.\nBuilt for ownership. You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.\nAll in. You treat clients' businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.\nResourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight. Constraints don't slow you down. They sharpen you.\nCalm when it gets hot. When scope, timeline, and stakeholders pull in three directions, you slow the room down enough to make the right call. You’d rather raise the hard trade-off in week two than absorb it in week eight.\nGlad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.\nThe below range reflects the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, seniority, geographic location, performance, shift, travel requirements, sales or revenue-based metrics, any collective bargaining agreements, and business or organizational needs. The salary range for this role is $180,000 USD - $215,000 USD. We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.\nAn offer of employment may be conditional upon successful completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation and our candidate privacy notice. Your current employer will not be contacted without your permission. We are committed to ensuring equal employment opportunities for all job applicants and employees. 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