At Zendesk, we get passionate about building software that delivers the ultimate customer experience. Your favorite brands maximize our products to engage you as a customer, and we lead the industry with appealingly simple software. We’re constantly innovating, and we apply this philosophy to all prioritized initiatives.
Job SummaryAs a Program Manager on our Product Development team, this role will work side-by-side with our passionate Product Management and Engineering teams to execute on initiatives critical to our product roadmaps. Together with your partners and stakeholders, you will drive solutions for cross-product problems and initiatives by ensuring releases move forward while focusing on key milestones to bring new products and services to market. You’ll have the opportunity to work autonomously but also have the support of our highly distributed Program Management team. You will be the glue that holds it all together, ensuring cross-team, cross-functional collaboration runs smoothly from end to end. You will have a global reach in this role and can expect to work with colleagues across EMEA, APAC and AMER.
What You’ll Be DoingWork with Product Development teams and collaborate with Marketing, Localization, Alliances, Advocacy, Customer Success, Legal, Finance, and Sales to drive the delivery of engineering programs on time. You will be the glue that holds it all together, ensuring that multi-functional partnership runs efficiently from end to end.
Lead your teams through our planning process’, helping to build out roadmaps, align dependencies, and broker commitments from other teams.
Identify, track and mitigate all risks and issues within your programs and relentlessly communicate potential shortfalls to Senior leadership.
Own regular status reporting for your primary programs.
Facilitate meetings, workshops, retrospectives, and other team ceremonies.
Build positive relationships with your team members and partners.
Devote effort towards making our processes simpler, clearer, and better every day.
Proven experience managing programs or technical projects, including planning, execution, and delivery of cross-functional initiatives with moderate supervision.
Ability to independently drive program activities—leveraging established processes and seeking guidance when needed.
Experience with Technical Program Management tools and agile methodologies: Jira, Confluence, Trello, Kanban, Productboard, Smartsheet
Solid understanding of organizational dynamics, able to identify how teams interact and leverage those connections to deliver program outcomes.
Experience implementing program management frameworks (such as a Launch Planner or similar) with limited oversight, ensuring consistent standards across projects.
Strong problem-solving skills: able to break down complex issues, clarify risks and concerns, define clear objectives, and develop realistic, actionable plans.
Adaptable and resilient when facing change and ambiguity, maintaining professionalism and a solutions-oriented approach.
Effective communicator—comfortable articulating the rationale behind decisions, presenting information to a range of stakeholders, and ensuring alignment.
Skilled facilitator—able to lead productive meetings, encourage inclusive participation, and drive toward clear outcomes.
Experience managing issues and dependencies within technical and/or product-focused teams, ensuring timely resolution and proactive risk mitigation.
Prior experience at a software company driving programs within an Engineering organization and having released a number of product features.
Hands-on experience with OKRs, or similar frameworks within established operational environments.
Demonstrated ability to build buy-in, hold teams accountable to program objectives, and engage with leadership for effective delegation and program governance.
Experience partnering with Managers, Directors, Product Managers (PMs), and Engineering Managers (EMs) to ensure cross-functional alignment on goals, strategy, and execution models.
Ability to impact and influence initiatives across multiple teams, contributing to broader organizational objectives while respecting established guidelines and policies.
That said, if your experience looks a little different from what we’ve identified and you think you can rock the role, we’d love to learn more about you!
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Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.
The intelligent heart of customer experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.
Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.
As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.
Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.
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