Technical Program Manager (Software Engineer) - Runpod

Runpod is the AI Developer Cloud. More than one million developers, from indie researchers to teams running frontier models in production, use Runpod to experiment, train, fine-tune, deploy, and scale AI on one platform. The platform has processed more than 20 billion inference requests. We closed a $100M Series A in June 2026. We're at an inflection point for AI infrastructure, and we're building the platform the next generation of developers will depend on.

We're a small, remote-first team. We take ownership seriously, move fast, and ship work that more than a million developers rely on every day. We're looking for people who care deeply, build with urgency, and want to matter at scale.

We’re seeking a Technical Program Manager (TPM) who understands how distributed systems are built and why they fail, and pairs that depth with exceptional organizational and communication skills. The ideal candidate is a self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and can drive execution through ambiguity with confidence and clarity.

As a TPM at Runpod, you’ll lead complex, cross-functional programs across product and platform teams, working closely with engineering leads and stakeholders across the company. You’ll help build the core of our cloud platform: the systems that schedule, scale, route, and run customer workloads on GPU infrastructure across regions. You’ll anticipate risks early, keep teams focused on what matters, and deliver high-impact work that creates real value for our customers.

Responsibilities

• Partner with engineering leads to understand squad architecture, constraints, and technical debt, and build plans that reflect how the systems actually behave.
• Own planning and delivery for complex, multi-team programs: scope, sequencing, dependencies, and timelines, with close attention to cross-service and cross-region dependencies.
• Identify technical risk early (scaling limits, failure modes, capacity constraints, migration complexity) and drive mitigation before it reaches customers or commitments.
• Participate in design and architecture reviews, surfacing gaps in rollout plans, observability, and fault tolerance.
• Drive launch readiness and safe rollout of platform changes, including staged releases, rollback plans, load and failure testing, and operational handoff.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for stakeholders, with clear, regular status updates and risks escalated early alongside options and recommendations.
• Work with Data, Product, and Engineering leads to define and track success metrics for performance, reliability, utilization, and cost, tied to customer outcomes.
• Partner with SRE to build visibility into system health, and help leadership balance investment in reliability, scale, and new capabilities.
• Coordinate with Supply and Data Center teams on how capacity and infrastructure changes affect platform roadmaps.
• Run post-launch and post-incident reviews, and drive the resulting improvements to completion.

Requirements

• 3+ years in technical program management or software/infrastructure engineering, leading complex programs for cloud or infrastructure products.
• Hands-on engineering experience on production distributed systems, with deep understanding of consistency and availability tradeoffs, queueing, scheduling, autoscaling, load balancing, failure handling, and performance at scale.
• Hands-on familiarity with cloud infrastructure fundamentals: compute, networking, storage, containers and orchestration, and multi-region architectures.
• Ability to read architecture docs, review designs, and hold credible technical conversations with senior engineers, including on reliability, latency, and capacity tradeoffs.
• Experience with observability and operational practices (metrics, logging, tracing, SLOs, incident response) and using them to drive program decisions.
• Proven track record of delivering multiple high-impact programs across 3+ cross-functional teams, from planning through launch.
• Strong quantitative skills, with the ability to turn system and cost data into clear recommendations.
• Deep understanding of the software development lifecycle and how engineering teams design, build, test, and ship production systems.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication, with the ability to align stakeholders across teams and functions.
• Ownership mindset: highly organized, proactive, and calm under pressure, favoring clarity and follow-through over rigid process.

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous experience in AI/ML developer platforms or GPU/cloud infrastructure-focused organizations.
• Experience in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Technical degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

What You’ll Receive

• Competitive base pay ranging from $140,000 - $165,000.
• Meaningful equity in a fast-growing company with stock options for all team members.
• Generous medical, dental, and vision plans.
• Flexible PTO policy.
• $1,200 home office and equipment stipend to set up your workspace.