About The Company

Founders today are building global companies from day one — but the systems that manage their money were built for a different era. Aspire exists to change that!

We're building the financial operating system for global founders, bringing banking, software, and automation into a single platform so businesses can move faster across borders and stay focused on building.

Aspire is built by people who think from first principles, care deeply about solving hard problems, and take real ownership of their work. Our team brings global experience from leading fintech and technology companies, and many of us are former founders and operators who understand what it takes to build thoughtfully, make trade-offs, and deliver at scale in a global environment.

Backed by leading global investors including Y Combinator, Peak XV, and Lightspeed, Aspire has been trusted by more than 50,000 startups and growing businesses worldwide to manage their finances since 2018. Together with partners like J.P. Morgan, Visa, and Wise, we're building for the next generation of global companies.

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.

By submitting this application, I confirm that all the information given by me in this application for employment and any additional documents attached hereto are true to the best of my knowledge and that I have not wilfully suppressed any material fact. I confirm I have disclosed if applicable any previous employment with Aspire. I accept that if any of the information given by me in this application is in any way false or incorrect, my application may be rejected, any offer of employment may be withdrawn or my employment with Aspire may be terminated summarily or I may be dismissed. By submitting this application, I agree that my personal data will be processed in accordance with Aspire's Candidate Privacy Notice

Technical Program Manager Strategy, AI & Delivery Excellence

Technical Program Manager