Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Program Director

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Program Director owns the end‑to‑end strategy, governance, roadmap and delivery of an organization's web ecosystem. This senior, cross‑functional leader aligns digital experience goals with business objectives, manages platform strategy (CMS, CDNs, eCommerce integrations), drives SEO and analytics programs, enforces accessibility and performance standards, and directs multi‑disciplinary teams and vendors to deliver measurable business outcomes. Ideal for candidates with deep technical knowledge of web platforms, proven program management experience, and the ability to influence senior stakeholders and product, marketing, engineering and design teams.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Web/Product Manager
Director of Digital Experience or Digital Product
Head of Web Operations or Web Platform Engineering

Advancement To:

VP of Digital Experience
Head of Product & Technology (Digital)
Chief Digital Officer

Lateral Moves:

Director of Platform Engineering
Director of UX & Conversion Optimization
Director of Digital Marketing Operations

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead the development and execution of a 12–24 month enterprise web strategy and roadmap that aligns with corporate objectives, driving measurable improvements in traffic, conversion, engagement and revenue.
Own governance for web platforms (CMS, eCommerce, personalization engines, CDNs), including platform selection, licensing, upgrade cycles and end‑of‑life planning.
Manage the full program lifecycle for large web initiatives — scoping, budgeting, resource planning, cross‑functional coordination, stakeholder communication and delivery of milestones.
Define and enforce architecture, performance, security and accessibility (WCAG 2.1/2.2) standards across all web properties and campaigns.
Oversee content operations and content strategy, coordinating editorial workflows, taxonomy, metadata, localization and governance for consistent brand and SEO outcomes.
Drive SEO strategy with technical SEO, content SEO and on‑page optimization programs; partner with organic search teams to improve indexation, structured data and search visibility.
Own analytics and measurement framework (GA4, Adobe Analytics, measurement plan), ensure data accuracy, define KPIs and translate analytics into prioritization and continuous improvement.
Lead platform migrations and large‑scale releases (e.g., CMS migration to AEM/Sitecore/Drupal/WordPress), ensuring minimal downtime, data integrity and stakeholder alignment.
Partner with engineering leads to prioritize technical debt, site performance improvements (TTFB, LCP, CLS), and CDN, caching and hosting optimizations.
Manage vendor and agency relationships — negotiate contracts, oversee deliverables, set SLAs, and evaluate vendor performance against program KPIs.
Define and run a release management and change control process for content and code deployments across production, staging and preview environments.
Build, lead and mentor a cross‑functional team (product managers, program managers, web developers, UX designers, QA and content specialists) and hire where gaps exist.
Establish a continuous A/B testing and CRO program to increase conversions and lift business metrics; prioritize experiments by impact and effort.
Coordinate localization and internationalization efforts to ensure scalable, translated content and consistent UX across markets.
Create and manage annual web program budgets, forecasting, and cost control; provide financial reporting tied to program ROI.
Establish incident response and post‑mortem processes for website outages, security incidents and critical performance regressions.
Drive accessibility remediation programs and maintain compliance by auditing, training teams, and integrating accessibility into development workflows.
Collaborate with marketing, product, customer success and sales to prioritize initiatives that reduce churn, increase acquisition and unlock new revenue channels.
Communicate program progress, risks and outcomes to senior leadership and stakeholders through executive dashboards, quarterly business reviews and program reports.
Implement QA and testing standards (functional, regression, browser, device, performance) to maintain high quality and stability before launches.
Lead privacy and data governance efforts for web properties — ensuring cookie consent management, data collection compliance (GDPR, CCPA) and interplay with analytics.
Drive technical documentation, runbooks and onboarding materials for web platform users and stakeholders to reduce operational friction.
Advocate for customer and UX research insights in prioritization; partner with UX researchers to integrate user testing into the product lifecycle.
Prioritize and manage cross‑functional risks and dependencies across product, engineering, security and infrastructure teams to maintain delivery cadence.
Monitor industry trends (web frameworks, headless CMS, server‑side rendering, edge compute) and recommend innovations to keep the web program competitive.

Secondary Functions

Support ad‑hoc executive data requests and produce concise, action‑oriented briefings from web analytics and performance dashboards.
Maintain a centralized web roadmap & backlog in Jira/Confluence and run quarterly planning, retrospective and program ceremonies to ensure agile delivery.
Contribute to the organization's digital governance framework and help update policies for content, SEO, and web security.
Provide stakeholder training sessions and documentation on CMS best practices, accessibility requirements and release processes.
Participate in vendor selection processes, run RFPs, and score responses against technical and commercial criteria.
Facilitate cross‑team workshops to align on UX requirements, SEO goals and analytics instrumentation during discovery phases.
Assist product marketing with landing page strategies, campaign tracking and subject matter expertise for high‑value launches.
Continuously refine runbooks and playbooks for website operational tasks and standard operating procedures.
Coordinate with cloud and infrastructure teams to budget and plan for capacity, CDN costs, and traffic spikes during campaigns.
Serve as escalation point for website incidents and lead post‑incident reviews to drive remediation and prevent recurrence.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

CMS strategy and hands‑on experience with enterprise platforms (Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, Drupal, WordPress or headless CMS patterns).
Strong knowledge of web analytics and measurement tools (Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics, Looker, BigQuery) and creating data‑driven dashboards.
Technical SEO expertise including crawlability, sitemaps, structured data (Schema.org), redirects, hreflang and mobile SEO best practices.
Familiarity with front‑end technologies (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript) and modern frameworks (React, Next.js) to make informed technical decisions.
Experience with performance optimization (Lighthouse, Core Web Vitals, CDN, caching strategies, image optimization).
Understanding of web accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1/2.2) and remediation approaches across design and engineering.
Program and project management tools and methodologies (Jira, Asana, Confluence, Agile/Scrum at scale).
Experience managing platform migrations, release pipelines, CI/CD and staging/production environments.
Knowledge of privacy and compliance for web (GDPR, CCPA), consent management platforms and data governance.
Experience with A/B testing and experimentation platforms (Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize successor workflows).
Familiarity with cloud hosting and infrastructure concepts (AWS/GCP/Azure), CDN providers and DNS.
Basic SQL or data query skills to validate analytics implementation and support ad‑hoc analysis.
Vendor and contract negotiation experience, managing managed services and third‑party integrations.
Experience with marketing automation and CRM integrations (Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce) as they relate to web conversions.

Soft Skills

Strategic thinker with the ability to translate business goals into pragmatic web programs and roadmaps.
Exceptional stakeholder management, able to influence senior leaders and align distributed teams.
Clear and persuasive communicator — experience presenting executive summaries and technical tradeoffs.
Strong leadership and talent development — hiring, mentoring and growing cross‑functional teams.
Problem solver with bias for action and experience managing ambiguity in fast‑moving environments.
Prioritization skills and the ability to balance speed, quality and cost.
Collaborative mindset — works well with design, engineering, marketing and product partners.
High emotional intelligence and conflict resolution skills for cross‑team negotiations.
Detail‑oriented with a strong operational discipline and sense of ownership.
Continuous improvement mindset and curiosity about new web technologies and best practices.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Digital Media, Marketing, Business Administration or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree (MBA or MS in a technical discipline), or relevant professional certifications (PMP, SAFe, Google Analytics/Analytics IQ).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Software Engineering
Digital Marketing / Communications
Human‑Computer Interaction / UX Design
Business Administration / Product Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 8–15+ years in digital/web roles with at least 4–7 years owning large web programs or platforms.

Preferred:

Proven track record leading enterprise web programs, platform migrations and managing multi‑disciplinary teams.
Demonstrated experience in SEO, analytics, accessibility programs, and driving measurable business KPIs through web channels.
Experience working with global or multi‑brand organizations and managing localization, governance and distributed stakeholder groups.