Torchora
Back to Home

Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Xenon Program Manager

💰 $ - $

Program ManagementProductEngineeringOperations

🎯 Role Definition

The Xenon Program Manager is a senior cross-functional leader responsible for planning, coordinating, and delivering complex, multi-year programs that span product, engineering, operations, and GTM teams. This role owns program-level roadmaps, drives alignment across stakeholders, mitigates risks, ensures on-time delivery of milestones, and measures program outcomes against business KPIs. The ideal candidate combines technical fluency (hardware, cloud, or SaaS contexts), strong program execution experience (Agile and Waterfall), vendor and partner management, and a data-driven approach to reporting and decision making.

Keywords: Xenon Program Manager, program management, cross-functional, roadmap, delivery, risk management, stakeholders, Agile, product lifecycle, go-to-market, vendor management, KPIs, OKRs, cloud, SaaS, hardware.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Program Manager (Product, Engineering, or Operations)
  • Technical Product Manager or Senior Project Manager with cross-functional delivery experience
  • Engineering Manager with demonstrated program ownership and stakeholder management

Advancement To:

  • Director of Program Management / Director of Programs
  • Senior Director / VP, Program Management or Program Operations
  • Head of Program Delivery or Chief of Staff for Product & Engineering

Lateral Moves:

  • Product Management (Group/Product Lead)
  • Head of Go-to-Market Program Delivery
  • Customer Success Program Lead for strategic enterprise accounts

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Drive end-to-end program lifecycle for the Xenon initiative: define scope, create integrated project plans, set milestones, allocate resources, and ensure timely delivery across multiple product and engineering teams.
  • Own and maintain the program roadmap, translate business strategy into quarterly and annual deliverables, and communicate roadmap changes to executive stakeholders and cross-functional teams.
  • Lead cross-functional program governance: convene steering committees, create decision frameworks, document program charters, and ensure consistent execution of governance rituals.
  • Coordinate detailed release planning and sprint-level execution with engineering leads, product owners, QA, UX, and operations to align tactical work to strategic milestones.
  • Proactively identify, track, and mitigate program-level risks and dependencies, escalating material issues to senior leadership with clear remediation plans and impact analysis.
  • Manage program financials including budgeting, forecasting, cost-to-complete analysis, and vendor spend; prepare regular financial status reports and justify variances to stakeholders.
  • Establish program KPIs, success metrics, and OKRs; design dashboards and reporting cadence to measure progress, adoption, and business outcomes for Xenon.
  • Serve as the primary stakeholder liaison: gather requirements, negotiate priorities, manage trade-offs, and maintain stakeholder alignment between Product, Engineering, Sales, Legal, and Marketing.
  • Define and manage third-party and vendor relationships for hardware, firmware, cloud services, and system integrators; negotiate SOWs, SLAs, and performance metrics.
  • Lead cross-functional risk and contingency planning for launch readiness, supply chain disruptions, and post-launch support scenarios.
  • Drive continuous improvement of program processes, templates, and tooling (Jira/Confluence, ADO, Smartsheet, Asana) to increase predictability and velocity across teams.
  • Oversee regulatory and compliance deliverables where applicable: ensure required documentation, testing, validation, and audit readiness for regulated markets.
  • Plan and coordinate go-to-market and launch activities with GTM partners, product marketing, sales enablement, and customer success to ensure synchronized rollouts and measurement of adoption.
  • Facilitate technical trade-off discussions between product, platform, and infrastructure teams to balance scope, schedule, cost, and quality for platform features and integrations.
  • Create and present executive-level program updates, including milestone status, risk heatmaps, budget-to-actuals, and recommendations for course correction.
  • Drive cross-team resource planning and capacity modeling, working closely with people managers to staff critical workstreams and accelerate key deliverables.
  • Lead post-launch retrospectives and program assessments to capture lessons learned, deliverables, and improvement plans that feed into future program roadmaps.
  • Coordinate user acceptance testing (UAT), beta programs, and pilot deployments with internal stakeholders and external customers to validate quality and gather product feedback.
  • Build and maintain a comprehensive program documentation library: decision logs, architecture diagrams, integration matrices, and runbooks for operations and support teams.
  • Act as the escalation point for cross-functional blockers, mediating conflicts, and negotiating pragmatic solutions that keep the program on track while protecting quality and customer experience.
  • Partner with data and analytics teams to define instrumentation, telemetry, and measurement plans that track usage, performance, and reliability of Xenon components.
  • Ensure operational readiness for scale: incident response plans, support playbooks, SLAs, and on-call rotations are defined and integrated with SRE and support organizations.
  • Manage complex interdependencies between multiple concurrent projects within the Xenon program, prioritizing based on business value, technical constraints, and regulatory timing.
  • Champion customer-centric decision-making by incorporating voice-of-customer feedback, field engineering insights, and sales/customer success data into program priorities.
  • Lead cross-cultural and distributed-team collaboration through effective virtual facilitation, inclusive communication, and clear expectations for deliverables across time zones.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Mentor and develop junior program managers and coordinators assigned to the Xenon program.
  • Support procurement activities including RFPs, vendor evaluations, and contract reviews for program-specific technologies and services.
  • Assist in change management activities: create communications, training materials, and run internal stakeholder briefings to drive adoption.
  • Coordinate cross-functional workshops to resolve architectural decisions, prioritize backlogs, and align product/engineering trade-offs.
  • Maintain a risk register and coordinate root cause analyses for major incidents or program delays.
  • Support capture and documentation of technical requirements and non-functional requirements in collaboration with systems architects and product managers.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Program and portfolio management for complex, multi-track technical programs (enterprise software, cloud, embedded/hardware).
  • Roadmap creation and milestone planning with experience in both Agile (Scrum/Kanban) and Waterfall delivery models.
  • Strong proficiency with program tools: Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Project, ADO, Smartsheet, or equivalent enterprise PM tools.
  • Financial planning and budget management for programs including OPEX/CAPEX tracking, forecasting, and vendor invoicing.
  • Risk management frameworks and dependency mapping tools; ability to create mitigation plans and lead escalation processes.
  • Experience with vendor/partner management: SOWs, SLAs, contract negotiation, and vendor performance assessment.
  • Data-driven decision making: comfortable working with analytics, telemetry, SQL, and dashboarding tools (Tableau, Looker, Power BI) to measure program outcomes.
  • Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and modern deployment models for SaaS and cloud-native services.
  • Technical literacy in systems architecture, integrations, APIs, and CI/CD pipelines to coordinate engineering trade-offs and timelines.
  • Knowledge of regulatory and compliance processes relevant to product, security, or hardware certification (e.g., ISO, SOC, CE, FCC) when applicable.
  • Experience planning and executing complex product launches and go-to-market programs with cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Proficiency in creating executive presentations, program briefs, and concise decision documents.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional stakeholder management and cross-functional influencing skills across engineering, product, sales, legal, and executive leadership.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to synthesize complex technical information into executive summaries.
  • Strategic thinking with an outcomes-oriented mindset: focused on business impact, customer value, and measurable KPIs.
  • Excellent facilitation and conflict-resolution abilities to drive decisions and remove blockers in high-stakes situations.
  • High emotional intelligence and team leadership aptitude to mentor, motivate, and align distributed teams.
  • Strong organizational skills and attention to detail with the ability to manage multiple concurrent priorities effectively.
  • Adaptability and resilience in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with competing demands and shifting timelines.
  • Proactive problem solving and analytical thinking with the ability to break down complex problems into clear action plans.
  • Coaching and people development skills to grow junior PM talent and foster a high-performing program team.
  • Customer empathy and commercial acumen to balance technical tradeoffs with revenue and adoption objectives.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Business, or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree (MBA, MS in Engineering Management, or related) or equivalent advanced training in program/project management (PMP, PgMP, Scrum Master).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Electrical or Mechanical Engineering
  • Systems Engineering
  • Business Administration / MBA
  • Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 7–12+ years of progressively responsible program, product, or engineering delivery experience; or equivalent combination of experience and education.

Preferred:

  • 10+ years managing large-scale technical programs or product lines with multi-disciplinary teams.
  • Proven track record delivering cross-functional programs involving hardware, firmware, cloud services, or enterprise SaaS.
  • Experience presenting to and influencing senior leadership and executive stakeholders.
  • Demonstrated experience managing vendor relationships, complex budgets, and regulatory or compliance workflows.
Explore More Careers