About the RoleVasion is adopting a Product Development Life Cycle, a cross-company operating model designed to bring just enough structure to how we build and ship software. As a Program Manager on the PDLC team, you will be one of the people who makes it real.
This is not a coordination role. You will not be tracking status and scheduling syncs. You will be embedded across engineering and product management teams as a practitioner, coach, and change agent helping teams not just follow the PDLC, but understand it, trust it, and work inside it naturally.
You will split your time between two things: operating the PDLC across active programs day-to-day, and helping build and improve the framework itself. Your perspective from inside the teams will actively shape how the system evolves. Vasion's engineering organization is also moving toward agent-native development, which means genuine curiosity about AI is part of the job.
What You Will DoPDLC Adoption and Change Enablement- Operate as an embedded PDLC practitioner, modeling the framework and helping cross-functional partners understand why it exists and how to use it
- Coach engineering and product management team members on PDLC practices by meeting them where they are, not where the playbook says they should be
- Build trust through consistency, follow-through, and genuine partnership, not process authority
- Communicate the value of the PDLC to engineering clearly and often: reduced context-switching, clearer scope handoffs, fewer rebuilds, better predictability
PDLC Framework Contribution and Development- Partner with the VP of PgM to build, document, and refine processes, templates, stage gate criteria, and governance standards
- Develop and maintain playbooks and documentation that make the PDLC accessible across Product Management and Engineering
- Translate on-the-ground experience into framework improvements
End-to-End Program Management- Own the full lifecycle of assigned programs from Discovery through Grow: scope, timelines, milestones, dependencies, and deliverables at every stage
- Build program plans that give Product Management, Engineering, Design, QA, and Go-to-Market a shared view of what is happening, what is next, and who owns what
- Stay ahead of risks and blockers; bring well-reasoned options to the VP before problems compound
- Facilitate kick-offs, stage gate reviews, cross-functional syncs, and retrospectives to drive clear outcomes and documented next steps every time
Cross-Functional Alignment and Communication- Serve as the day-to-day coordination point between Product Management, Engineering, Design, QA, and Go-to-Market for programs in your portfolio
- Surface and resolve cross-team misalignments and dependency conflicts before they impact delivery
Reporting and Documentation- Maintain accurate, up-to-date program documentation throughout the full lifecycle
- Treat documentation as a core part of program quality in order to make programs reproducible, learnable, and increasingly agent-ready
Requirements- 5-8 years of program management experience in software, at the program level across multiple teams
- Cross-functional programs through multiple phases of a product or software development lifecycle
- Embedded directly within engineering and/or product management teams, not a centralized PMO
- Participated in or drove a process or operating model change
- Fluency with Atlassian (Jira/Confluence), Notion, and/or Adobe Workfront
- B2B SaaS or enterprise software experience strongly preferred
Preferred Experience- Dual-track agile, Shape Up, OKR-based planning, or similar lean frameworks
- Product management discovery concepts: opportunity mapping, user story mapping, hypothesis-driven development
- Supported both product management and engineering within the same organization
- High-growth or PE-backed software environment
Skills and Attributes- Drives alignment through credibility and partnership, not role authority
- Understands why a process step exists and can explain it plainly to skeptical teams
- Decomposes complex initiatives into legible phases without over-engineering
- Genuinely curious about AI and already using it
- Treats friction as information, not failure
- Cares about the outcome more than the credit
Education- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required
- PMP, CSM, PMI-ACP, or equivalent a plus
Bonus- Helped a skeptical engineering or product management team adopt a new way of working and can describe specifically what it took
- Contributed to building a PDLC or SDLC framework from scratch
- Has a working mental model of what makes cross-functional alignment hard and specific tactics used to address it
Why This Role, Why NowVasion is building something most growing software companies underinvest in until it is too late: a mature, scalable, and genuinely useful Product Development Life Cycle. You would be joining at the ground floor of that build, working directly alongside a VP invested in your development, on programs visible across the entire Product and Engineering organization, in a culture that rewards initiative and ownership.
Benefits- Flexible work environment
- Discretionary Vacation Bonus
- Flexible paid time off
- Paid parental leave
- Competitive pay
- A full suite of traditional benefits
- Training/Advancement opportunities
- 401k with company match and immediate vesting
- Financial wellness education
- Mental Wellness Support
- Company-contributed HSA
- Onsite perks include gym, pickleball, snacks & drinks, arcade, theater room, etc.