Senior Technical Program Manager

Job Description

Senior Technical Program Manager (Data Platforms & Operations)
PlayStation isn't just the Best Place to Play - it's also the Best Place to Work. Today, we're recognized as a global leader in entertainment producing The PlayStation family of products and services including PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Plus, acclaimed PlayStation software titles from PlayStation Studios, and more.
PlayStation also strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome and encourage everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team.
The PlayStation brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.
The Senior Technical Program Manager for Data Platforms & Operations will drive the planning, coordination, and delivery of complex initiatives across our cloud-based data platforms and their operations.
In this role the successful candidate will work closely with engineering managers, SRE/operations teams, and data/AI engineering teams who own the data products and data services which rely on the efficient running and delivery of data platforms. Your role is to:
• Coordinate cross-team work so platform and operational changes land predictably and safely.
• Structure delivery (roadmaps, plans, dependencies, risks) for data platform programs.
• Improve operational performance by assisting engineering managers, ensuring metrics and runbooks are part of the delivery process.
• Provide transparency to leadership via clear, metric-led reporting on status, risk, and outcomes.
This is a senior individual contributor role suited to someone who is highly organised, data-driven, and comfortable working with technical stakeholders across a varied data ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities
Program & Delivery Management
• Plan and run cross-platform programs for data platform and operational initiatives (e.g. major upgrades, reliability improvements, cost optimisation, new platform capabilities).
• Build and maintain integrated program plans (scope, milestones, dependencies, risks, decision points) across multiple engineering and operations teams.
• Facilitate regular delivery cadences (stand-ups, status reviews) with engineering managers and leads; ensure actions are owned and tracked to completion.
• Ensure that program objectives are clearly defined, measurable, and aligned with business outcomes, such as:
• Improved platform availability and reliability.
• Reduced incident frequency and MTTR targets.
• Improved data freshness, latency, and throughput for key workloads.
Operational Coordination & Readiness
• Partner with engineering managers, SREs, and operations teams to assist them in coordinating operational activities are delivered by data platform teams:
• Change calendars, release planning, and operational readiness reviews.
• Operational playbooks and runbook readiness for new features or platform changes.
• Coordinated communication during planned maintenance and impactful changes.
• Align with service owners (engineering managers) on operational priorities and schedules, helping sequence work in a way that balances reliability, feature delivery, and cost.
Measurement, Metrics & Reporting
• Work with engineering managers and service owners to ensure platform and operational KPIs, are part of the end delivery:
• SLA/SLO/SLI for data platforms and pipelines (e.g. uptime, data freshness, query performance).
• Operational metrics such as incident rate, MTTR, change success rate, and capacity utilisation.
• Ensure consistent measurement and reporting of delivery metrics across programs and operational areas:
• Curate and maintain dashboards and status reports for leadership.
• Highlight trends, risks, and trade-offs in a clear and concise way.
• Use analytics to prioritise improvements, identify systemic issues, and quantify impact of program work.
Cross-Team Alignment & Communication
• Facilitate coordination across:
• Data platform engineering (cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, data platform services).
• Data engineering and ETL/ELT teams.
• AI/ML engineering teams consuming data platform capabilities.
• Operations, SRE, and service desk teams.
• Align teams on priorities, sequencing, and dependencies for shared initiatives, ensuring upstream and downstream impacts are understood.
• Communicate program status to stakeholders at multiple levels:
• Concise executive summaries of progress, risk, and impact.
• Detailed views for engineering teams on dependencies, decisions, and next steps.
Continuous Improvement & Governance
• Support governance initiatives for data platforms are part of the delivery process:
• - Align teams on documenting and delivering templates/checklists for change reviews, and operational readiness.
• Promote continuous improvement initiatives focused on:
• Increasing automation in operations and delivery processes.
• Reducing toil and manual coordination where possible.
• Strengthening platform resilience and reducing operational risk.
• Capture and socialise lessons learned across programs to improve future planning, estimation, and operational practices.

Experience required
• Technical Program / Project Management
• Significant experience (typically 7+ years) in technical program management or project management in a software, data, or cloud engineering context.
• Proven track record of driving cross-team programs from planning through delivery, with demonstrable impact on reliability, performance, or efficiency.
• Operational & Reliability Focus
• Experience working closely with operations, SRE, or platform teams on production services.
• Delivery Excellence
• Strong skills in planning, dependency management, and risk management across multiple teams.
• Comfortable operating in an agile environment, coordinating between different teams and methodologies.
• Able to break down ambiguous objectives into clear, sequenced workstreams.
• Communication & Stakeholder Management
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to tailor information for engineers, managers, and senior leaders.
• Effective at influencing without authority, building trust with engineering managers and cross-functional partners.
• Comfortable facilitating workshops, retrospectives, and decision-making forums.
• Tools & Ways of Working
• Proficient with tools such as JIRA, Confluence, and similar project tracking and documentation systems.

Experience (desirable)
• Cloud & Data Platform Familiarity
•
• Working familiarity (conceptual and conversational) with AWS cloud services, Snowflake or similar cloud data warehouses, Kubernetes, and ETL/ELT data pipelines.
• Some awareness of ITIL best practices for service management
• Able to understand and discuss system architectures, operational constraints, and trade-offs with technical leads (you're not expected to write production code).
• Operational & Reliability Focus
• Strong understanding of SLA, SLO, and SLI concepts and how they relate to reliability, customer experience, and business value.
• Experience in incident management, post-incident reviews, and operational readiness.
• Tools & Ways of Working
• Familiar with dashboards and monitoring tools (e.g., DataDog, CloudWatch, Grafana) from a program/metrics perspective.
• Experience working globally with a variety of cultures including Japan, India, Ireland and the US
• Q

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Jobcode: Reference SBJ-ve16vm-216-73-216-34-42 in your application.