Staff Program Manager - Central Engineering Operations

About the Role

Fivetran is building data pipelines to power the modern data stack for thousands of companies.

We’re looking for a Staff Program Manager for our Central Engineering Operations team to help us reach our goals and help our Engineering team be the best that it can be!

The mission for the Staff Program Manager, Central Engineering Operations, is to drive operational excellence and improve execution effectiveness across key Engineering and R&D areas. Our Engineering organization is grouped into a number of functional global groups that are utilizing various processes, systems, tools, and KPIs in order to jointly deliver best-in-class data pipelines and drive innovation.

The role focuses on increasing engineering and R&D efficiency and effectiveness in delivering our strategic objectives by leading end-to-end major process and efficiency improvement projects and programs.

As the majority of the processes belong to the software development industry, the role assumes you have broad experience in software development, leading multiple programs, and shipping software from start to finish. You have worked closely with cross-functional teams with design, research, product, and engineering. Preferably, you work at a tech company and are heavily involved in engineering operations, understanding how engineering and R&D processes work under the hood and how to take them to the next level, leveraging data-driven approaches.

We want you to bring your passion for problem-solving, experience in the tech world, and the drive to help us get to the next level, and have some fun along the way.

This is a full-time position based out of our Novi Sad office. Our hybrid work model offers a blend of remote flexibility and in-person collaboration, including two days in the office each week to connect and build as a team.

What You’ll Do

• Ensure operations and strategy execution work seamlessly and effectively, and streamline engineering and R&D processes to be simple, value-oriented, and scalable.
• Lead and manage engineering and R&D process enhancements to set up or improve engineering and cross-departmental processes, and be responsible for transitioning them to operational state (all in coordination with key stakeholders), resulting in documented, repeatable, and measurable processes. This includes end-to-end work from problem definition and data analysis through solution proposal, alignment with R&D leadership, and execution and adoption of the changes.
• Partner with engineering group leaders to improve planning, execution, and operational health within their organizations, with a particular focus on increasing the efficiency, stability, and effectiveness in the delivery of their strategic objectives.
• Support engineering leadership in quarterly planning, tracking OKRs, and driving execution against strategic priorities in consistent alignment with engineering-wide and R&D policies and practices.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to the team of operations managers to manage engineering initiatives, solve problems, and optimize and automate routine operations, increasing the team's and engineering's value-added time.
• Work closely with senior engineers and leadership teams to ensure strict adherence to operational processes. Conduct audits and check-ins to identify areas for improvement and ensure continuous process refinement.
• Collaborate with operations managers and cross-functional partners to improve execution, automate workflows, and increase operational efficiency, and also directly contribute to the improvement and support of our internal knowledge management process and information structure in collaboration with other Ops and PMO teams.
• Manage R&D-wide initiatives. Coordinate and oversee the preparation, planning, and delivery of engineering updates, events, and R&D-wide initiatives, ensuring alignment with corporate goals.
• Drive operational excellence across R&D: spearhead and champion global operational strategies, focusing on optimizing engineering processes to be more efficient, scalable, and aligned with the company’s long-term vision.

Skills We’re Looking For

• 6+ years of experience in technical/operations management in the technology/software development industry with technical expertise that enables you to define automation requirements, automate operational workflows, and perform data analysis using query languages and AI.
• Ability to work directly with senior leadership on programs, including leading R&D-wide (engineering, product, design, security) initiatives from start to finish.
• Proven experience in optimizing operations on an Engineering and R&D scale, creating actionable plans, and managing execution to enhance operational effectiveness, efficiency, and scalability across multiple engineering teams and departments, and adhering to various compliance requirements.
• You can facilitate discussions with engineering subject matter experts on topics such as System Design, Data Architecture, Infrastructure Management (including cost management), Quality, etc., in the context of engineering operations.
• Ability to leverage AI to increase your own productivity and leverage it in the solutions you’re building.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills with the ability to interact and collaborate with technical and non-technical groups at all levels.
• A data-driven and action-oriented mindset with excellent planning, analytical, problem-solving, project/program management, organizational, and leadership skills.

Bonus Skills​

• Experience driving projects end-to-end, and shipping complex, large-scale software projects with global teams utilizing different SDLCs.
• Familiarity with project management tools like Jira and analytical tools like Looker and Sigma.
• Experience working at cloud platforms and SaaS companies in the past is a plus.
• Familiarity with the following technologies is a plus: Cloud service providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), ETL or ELT, modern data stack.

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