Principal Program Manager, Engineering Operations

The Role

Define the Engineering Operating Model

Establish Governance and Engineering Standards

Define Systems of Record and Traceability

Drive Adoption and Continuous Improvement

What We're Looking For

What Success Looks Like

Qualifications

• Deep experience in engineering leadership, systems engineering, technical program leadership, engineering operations, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to design and improve engineering processes across large, complex organizations.
• Strong understanding of engineering lifecycle models, technical governance, reviews, risk management, and traceability.
• Ability to distinguish where standardization creates leverage from where local autonomy is more effective.
• Strong technical credibility across software, systems, infrastructure, or multidisciplinary engineering environments.
• Experience influencing senior engineering leaders without relying on direct authority.
• Strong systems thinking, judgment, and ability to simplify complex operating models.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• What Success Looks Like
• Engineering teams use a common language and operating model where consistency matters.
• Lifecycle expectations, standards, and decision authorities are clear and widely understood.
• Engineering data is captured once in the right systems of record and is trusted.
• Leaders spend less time reconciling process differences and more time making decisions.
• Teams retain flexibility where local variation creates value.
• Engineering rigor improves while unnecessary ceremony decreases.
• The operating model becomes a foundation for scalable automation and agentic engineering workflows.
• Pay Transparency: To support pay transparency, Vantor includes salary ranges in all U.S. job postings. Starting pay for this role will fall within the listed range and will be based on factors such as experience, qualifications, skills, location, and market conditions. Candidates who meet the minimum requirements for the role should not expect to receive compensation at the top of the range. The listed range reflects the expected pay for this position, and final offers will be determined based on each candidate’s experience, expertise, and alignment with the role.
• For all other states, we use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop market-driven ranges for our roles, and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range.

Responsibilities

• Define the Engineering Operating Model
• Own the common engineering lifecycle model across planning, design, delivery, and evidence.
• Define the minimum set of standards, reviews, artifacts, and decision points required across Engineering.
• Establish clear boundaries between enterprise-wide standards and domain-specific tailoring.
• Simplify existing processes before standardizing or automating them.
• Ensure the operating model provides appropriate rigor for mission-critical engineering without creating unnecessary ceremony.
• Establish Governance and Engineering Standards
• Define lifecycle reviews, decision authorities, escalation paths, and governance expectations.
• Partner with domain architects and engineering leaders to align technical and operational standards.
• Clarify ownership and accountability for engineering artifacts, decisions, risks, and evidence.
• Create practical playbooks, templates, and guardrails that make the model easy to adopt.
• Define Systems of Record and Traceability
• Establish what information must live in authoritative engineering systems of record.
• Define required metadata, artifact relationships, and traceability expectations.
• Improve the consistency and quality of engineering execution data.
• Ensure the operating model produces reliable context for both human decision-making and agentic workflows.
• Partner with Developer Enablement and other platform teams on implementation of tooling and integrations.
• Drive Adoption and Continuous Improvement
• Work with Engineering leaders to roll out common standards and operating practices.
• Identify friction, inconsistency, and unnecessary process across teams.
• Measure adoption and effectiveness of the operating model.
• Evolve standards based on execution data, feedback, and lessons learned.
• Challenge any process that adds effort without improving quality, predictability, safety, or decision-making.
• What We're Looking For
• Deep experience in engineering leadership, systems engineering, technical program leadership, engineering operations, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to design and improve engineering processes across large, complex organizations.
• Strong understanding of engineering lifecycle models, technical governance, reviews, risk management, and traceability.
• Ability to distinguish where standardization creates leverage from where local autonomy is more effective.
• Strong technical credibility across software, systems, infrastructure, or multidisciplinary engineering environments.
• Experience influencing senior engineering leaders without relying on direct authority.
• Strong systems thinking, judgment, and ability to simplify complex operating models.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• What Success Looks Like
• Engineering teams use a common language and operating model where consistency matters.
• Lifecycle expectations, standards, and decision authorities are clear and widely understood.
• Engineering data is captured once in the right systems of record and is trusted.
• Leaders spend less time reconciling process differences and more time making decisions.
• Teams retain flexibility where local variation creates value.
• Engineering rigor improves while unnecessary ceremony decreases.
• The operating model becomes a foundation for scalable automation and agentic engineering workflows.
• Pay Transparency: To support pay transparency, Vantor includes salary ranges in all U.S. job postings. Starting pay for this role will fall within the listed range and will be based on factors such as experience, qualifications, skills, location, and market conditions. Candidates who meet the minimum requirements for the role should not expect to receive compensation at the top of the range. The listed range reflects the expected pay for this position, and final offers will be determined based on each candidate’s experience, expertise, and alignment with the role.
• For all other states, we use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop market-driven ranges for our roles, and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range.