About the Team
The Office of the CTO drives alignment, efficiency, and execution across a large, global engineering organization. This role partners closely with the Chief of Staff, CTO, VP-level leaders, and cross-functional teams to ensure our services, releases, and engineering operations run with excellence, predictability, and measurable outcomes.
About the Role
We are seeking a Principal Technical Program Manager to drive the strategy, execution, and prioritization of security initiatives across the engineering organization. The security organization has deep domain expertise but needs strong program leadership to translate security requirements into prioritized, executable work that resonates with engineering teams and stakeholders.
This role is highly visible, influencing Director+ and VP-level leaders, and will serve as the connective tissue between security domain experts and engineering teams. You will own complex, multi-quarter programs, manage dependencies and timelines, drive stakeholder alignment, and enable the security team to deliver impact at scale across the organization.
Key Responsibilities
Program Execution & Prioritization
Own end-to-end delivery of security initiatives, translating domain requirements into prioritized, scoped programs with clear timelines and dependencies.
Work closely with security leadership to understand initiatives, then map those to engineering team capacity, constraints, and strategic priorities.
Drive consistent program cadences-status tracking, risk management, escalation protocols-that keep complex, multi-team initiatives on track.
Establish metrics and dashboards for program progress, enabling data-driven prioritization and executive visibility into security initiative delivery.
Cross-Org Alignment & Enablement
Facilitate productive collaboration between security and engineering stakeholders, translating domain language into engineering priorities and vice versa.
Partner with engineering leadership and platform teams to remove blockers, identify capacity, and build realistic delivery plans.
Drive adoption of security practices across teams by working with security to communicate clearly why changes matter and how engineering teams should implement them and by when.
Navigate competing priorities and ambiguity to define structure, resolve cross-domain challenges, and deliver durable improvements that scale.
Stakeholder Leadership & Communication
Act as a strategic partner to the CTO, Chief of Staff, and security leadership on organization-wide initiatives, synthesizing insights and recommending actionable next steps.
Lead executive reviews, planning sessions, and cross-functional forums to drive alignment and accountability.
Simplify complex security topics and translate them into business and engineering impact for Director+ and VP stakeholders.
About You
Basic Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field-or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years in technical program management, engineering operations, or similar roles in large-scale SaaS or enterprise environments, with a track record of delivering complex, multi-team programs with measurable outcomes.
Strong understanding of software engineering practices, development workflows, and engineering culture; ability to think and communicate like an engineer.
Demonstrated expertise in program delivery: managing dependencies, creating realistic timelines, tracking critical path items, and communicating status transparently to executives.
Exceptional communication and executive influencing skills-able to simplify ambiguity, build alignment across distributed stakeholders and competing priorities, and drive decision-making in matrix organizations.
Experience working at the intersection of technical and business priorities, translating domain requirements (security, infrastructure, platform, etc.) into prioritized engineering execution.
Background working with Security, Infrastructure, or Platform teams in an engineering organization.
Experience enabling and scaling practices or initiatives across multiple engineering teams or pillars.
Nice to Have
Experience building or working with operational dashboards and BI tools for program tracking and executive reporting.
Familiarity with software security concepts (though deep domain expertise is not required-you'll partner with security experts for that).
The pay range for this position is $184,300 to $264,950. The actual base pay offered may vary depending on skills, experience, job-related knowledge and work location. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible to participate in a performance-based bonus plan and to receive restricted stock unit awards as part of total compensation. Learn more about UKG's benefits and rewards at https://www.ukg.com/about-us/careers/benefits