About the role:

We are looking for a strategic and execution-focused Technical Program Manager who thrives in fast-paced environments and enjoys solving complex operational and technical challenges.

This role goes beyond traditional program management; it requires someone who can drive automation, lead AI-powered productivity initiatives, and work seamlessly across teams to improve workflows and help scale operational processes across the organisation.

We're not hiring a typical program manager who runs rituals, moves tickets, or waits for instructions. We're looking for someone who sees a messy system and fixes it using tooling, automation, and AI. If your instinct is to ask why does this exist at all instead of just how do I execute this better, you'll do well here. This is a hands-on role where you'll be in the admin panels, not just talking about them.

The ideal candidate combines first-principles thinking with a strong bias for action, deep hands-on expertise in Atlassian tools and large-scale program driving, and a passion for leveraging AI and automation to raise the bar for execution quality and speed.

Key Responsibilities:

Drive Tech Delivery at Scale: Own end-to-end programme management across engineering, QA, and product. Identify bottlenecks, take personal ownership of fixing them, and replace ad-hoc execution with structured, measurable delivery.

Bridge Tech and the Business: Be the primary conduit between engineering and cross-functional teams for product launches, new geographies, and platform initiatives. Surface technical risks and constraints early, not after commitments are made.

Lead with AI and Vibe Coding: Champion AI tooling and vibe coding practices to accelerate delivery speed and team productivity. Set the standard for how the tech org adopts new tooling while ensuring every efficiency gain is durable and governed.

AI-First Automation & Agent Implementation: Identify high-leverage workflows and replace them with AI-driven solutions, LLM workflows, agents, or automations that remove real manual work. Focus on measurable impact, not experimentation.

First Principles Thinking, Full Ownership: Break complex problems down to their root cause and design solutions from the ground up. Bias for action and personal accountability; this role closes loops, not just opens tickets.

Raise the Bar on Quality and Productivity: Drive continuous improvement across engineering velocity, QA rigour, and release confidence. Make excellence systematic through the right metrics, cadences, and feedback loops.

Own Systems as Products: Jira, CRM, and Confluence are not tools you maintain; they are internal products you own. Manage workflows, schemas, automations, permissions, and structure with a clear point of view on how they should evolve.

Process Design and improvement: When a workflow is broken, map how it actually works (not how it's documented), identify failure points, and fix it, often by simplifying or removing it entirely.

Operational Excellence & Operating Governance: Build scalable processes, dashboards, and operational mechanisms to improve visibility, collaboration, and execution efficiency across teams.

Requirements:

5+ years of experience in Technical Program Management, Strategy & Operations, or similar roles in fast-paced tech organizations.

Strong hands-on expertise with Jira, Confluence, workflow management, and large-scale program tracking.

Proven experience managing cross-functional technical programs across Engineering, QA, and Product

You've built with AI, not just used it. Implemented an automation platform, engineering productivity tooling, or operational transformation initiatives and workflow that replaced or significantly improved a real process.

Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills with the ability to influence both technical and business teams

Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities with a first-principles thinking approach

Experience driving operational excellence, delivery governance, and process optimization initiatives

Ability to thrive in ambiguous, high-ownership, and rapidly evolving environments

Experience in fintech, SaaS, or high-growth startup environments is a plus

Preferred Traits

Strategic thinker with strong execution orientation; comfortable going from whiteboard to delivery

Highly organized with a strong ownership mindset; closes loops, doesn't just flag problems

Passionate about AI, vibe coding, automation, and scaling operational efficiency

Comfortable challenging the status quo and driving change across teams

Strong collaborator who can align diverse teams across functions and seniority levels

Opinionated about how good systems should work and has successfully pushed through changes that simplified or removed unnecessary complexity

What We Care Less About:

Formal Scrum Master or Agile certifications

Whether you have an engineering background, we care about systems thinking and execution

Running standups, ceremonies, or acting as a coordination layer between teams

Maintaining Jira hygiene without questioning it

Waiting for requirements before acting

Your First 90 Days:

Audit Aspire's Jira setup and rebuild parts that no longer reflect how we work.

Take ownership of our CRM stack and rationalise fields, pipelines, and automations.

Ship multiple workflow improvements that remove meaningful manual work each week.

Introduce AI-driven automations that increase operational leverage across teams.

Publish a clear tooling map and roadmap for what we keep, change, or deprecate.

Technical Program Manager – Strategy, AI & Delivery Excellence