Principal Program Manager

Principal Program Manager

Cornerstone OnDemand is looking for a Principal Program Manager who will drive the planning, execution, and delivery of complex, cross-functional technical programs. You will work at the intersection of engineering, product, and business teams to ensure large-scale initiatives are delivered with clarity, predictability, and impact. This role requires a strong technical foundation combined with exceptional program management skills to orchestrate multiple workstreams and stakeholders toward shared outcomes.

In this role, you will…

Program Planning & Execution:

• Own end-to-end program management for large-scale, cross-functional technical initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams, products, and business units.
• Define program scope, milestones, deliverables, success criteria, and resource requirements in collaboration with engineering and product leadership.
• Build and maintain detailed program plans, roadmaps, and schedules with clear dependencies, critical paths, and risk mitigation strategies.
• Drive program execution through structured governance — standups, status reviews, steering committee meetings, and escalation workflows.
• Track and report program health, progress, risks, and blockers to senior leadership and stakeholders through dashboards and executive summaries.
• Manage program-level trade-offs across scope, timeline, quality, and resources — making recommendations grounded in data and technical context.
• Conduct retrospectives and post-mortems to capture lessons learned and drive continuous improvement in delivery processes.
• Identify process bottlenecks and inefficiencies across teams and implement improvements to accelerate delivery cycles.

Technical Leadership & Cross-Functional Alignment

• Partner with engineering leaders and architects to understand system designs, technical dependencies, and integration points across programs.
• Facilitate architecture and design reviews to ensure alignment across teams and identify cross-cutting concerns early.
• Coordinate platform migrations, infrastructure upgrades, API versioning, and other technical initiatives that span multiple teams.
• Partner with DevOps and SRE teams to ensure release readiness, deployment coordination, and operational handoffs for program deliverables.
• Define and drive Agile-at-scale practices (SAFe, Scrum of Scrums, or similar) across engineering teams to improve delivery predictability and velocity.
• Facilitate alignment between product roadmaps, engineering capacity, and business priorities to ensure realistic commitments.

Stakeholder Communication & Risk Management

• Serve as the central point of communication for program status, decisions, and escalations across engineering, product, design, QA, and business teams.
• Translate complex technical concepts and program details into clear, concise updates for executive leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
• Manage stakeholder expectations proactively — surfacing trade-offs, timeline impacts, and scope changes early with data-backed recommendations.
• Build and maintain a risk management framework — proactively identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks before they become blockers.
• Manage cross-team dependency tracking, capacity planning, and sprint/release coordination.
• Build strong relationships across the organization to enable effective collaboration and influence without authority.

You've Got What It Takes If You Have…

Requirements:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of experience in technical program management, engineering project management, or a related role within software product organizations.
• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering or technical lead experience (prior to or alongside program management).
• Proven track record of successfully delivering large-scale, cross-functional technical programs on time and within scope.

Technical Expertise:

• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle, system architecture, distributed systems, and cloud platforms (Azure preferred).
• Familiarity with microservices architecture, API design, CI/CD pipelines, and modern DevOps practices.
• Ability to read and understand code, technical design documents, and architecture diagrams at a level sufficient to assess risks and dependencies.
• Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies and scaling frameworks.
• Proficiency with program management and collaboration tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, Smartsheet, or MS Project.

Communication & Leadership

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to tailor messaging for technical and executive audiences.
• Strong facilitation skills — able to lead productive meetings, drive decisions, and resolve conflicts constructively.
• Exceptional organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple complex programs simultaneously.
• Proven ability to build trust and influence across engineering, product, and business functions.
• Proactive and self-driven with a strong sense of ownership over program outcomes.

Nice to Have

• Experience in SaaS/enterprise product development environments.
• Exposure to AI/ML programs and their unique delivery challenges.
• Familiarity with talent management, HR tech, or learning management domains.

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Who We Are:

Cornerstone powers the potential of organizations and their people to thrive in a changing world. Cornerstone Galaxy, the complete AI-powered workforce agility platform, meets organizations where they are. With Galaxy, organizations can identify skills gaps and development opportunities, retain and engage top talent, and provide multimodal learning experiences to meet the diverse needs of the modern workforce. More than 7,000 organizations and 100 million+ users in 180+ countries and in nearly 50 languages use Cornerstone Galaxy to build high-performing, future-ready organizations and people today.

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