Senior Manager - Technical Program Management

Supabase Supabase · Data AI · Remote · Engineering

Senior Manager, Technical Program Management to join Supabase's R&D Organization to stand up the Technical Program Management function. This role reports to the Head of Product, Engineering, and Design and partners with Customer Success, Support, GTM, and PMM. The individual will manage a small team of senior IC TPMs and own the cross-functional interface between Engineering, Product, Design, and the value delivery chain. The role requires defining the operating model, standards, and engagement model for TPM, hiring and growing the team, and owning the dependency graph and launch readiness for large cross-functional programs. The ideal candidate has experience building TPM functions, strong technical fluency, and experience defining project management standards.

What you'd actually do

  1. Stand up the TPM function at Supabase. Define the operating model, the engagement model within product, eng and design, the standards we hold ourselves to, and the bar for the role. Hire and grow the team over time.
  2. Manage the senior IC TPM and grow the team as the function proves out. Coach, set direction, hold the standard, and protect the team from drift into status-collection or hygiene-on-behalf-of-teams.
  3. Own the cross-functional interface fabric between EPD and the rest of the company — named seams between Engineering and Customer Success, Support, GTM, PMM, with DRIs on each side, hand-off contracts, SLAs, and escalation paths. This is the unowned gap in the company today and your highest-leverage area in the first year.
  4. Author the company standard for project management in Linear, and pair synchronously with EMs and program leads on key cross-functional projects to make sure they get broken down against the standard. The standard covers project structure, tagging and labeling, milestone conventions, issue breakdown patterns, and the leadership views we use to read program state. You are accountable for the outcome of that standard in Linear at the company level.
  5. Hold the line on accountability. EMs are accountable for delivery and for the project management discipline on their teams. Your team authors the standard and supports synchronously. You do not let the TPM function drift into doing hygiene work on behalf of teams; that failure mode is the explicit antipattern we're hiring against.

Skills

Required

  • 10+ years of experience in technical program management
  • experience standing up or scaling a TPM function in a high-growth software company
  • managed a team of senior IC TPMs
  • strong technical fluency
  • built cross-functional interfaces between engineering and the field
  • operated Linear, Jira, or equivalent at scale
  • defining the standard that many teams run on
  • clear point of view on the difference between TPM and PMO
  • comfortable working with Engineering Managers as the accountable owners on each team
  • communicate with precision in writing and async
  • high judgment
  • can hold a position without positional authority

What the JD emphasized

  • built TPM functions before
  • define the operating fabric
  • not PMO
  • accountable for delivery
  • own the connective tissue
  • dependency graph
  • company standard
  • run projects in Linear
  • failure modes of centralized status-collection
  • hygiene-on-behalf-of-teams
  • explicit antipattern we're hiring against