Senior Principal, Technical Program Management

About the role

Twilio is seeking a Senior Principal Technical Program Manager to guide strategic, intricate, and multifaceted programs within Research & Development. This role is pivotal in accelerating R&D's business impact by shaping program strategy and leading teams to achieve significant business, operational, and technical advancements across Engineering and Product.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Develop and oversee the technical strategy and multi-year roadmaps for critical, cross-organizational technical initiatives that shape Twilio's platforms. Manage complex systems and significant risks, acting as the main technical liaison for SVPs and executive leadership on vital programs.
• Design comprehensive execution frameworks, including global coordination, multi-level governance, architectural integration strategies, and enterprise-level operational success metrics. Ensure strategies address technical debt and long-term platform health, establishing a sustainable delivery model beyond basic project plans.
• Coordinate alignment across multiple portfolios, owning the master execution roadmap for intricate, interconnected product suites. Identify and resolve significant discrepancies between engineering roadmaps, presenting high-stakes trade-offs and resource adjustments to executive leadership.
• Collaborate closely with lead engineers and architects to assess technical approaches, integration methods, and operational risks, ensuring plans account for real system limitations, potential failures, and readiness requirements.
• Establish clear accountability systems for high-stakes programs, defining the standards for cross-functional team interactions and ensuring distinct ownership across different domains when technical priorities clash.
• Proactively identify system-wide technical needs, such as global security or compliance changes, complex billing updates, or observability deficiencies, and ensure they are integrated into the core technical design from the outset.
• Create and implement enduring program structures and technical readiness standards to enhance the execution capabilities of the entire global R&D organization, developing best practices that become Twilio's standard for large-scale engineering delivery.
• Act as a mentor to Principal TPMs and Engineering Leads, elevating the collective expertise in technical risk management, executive communication, and efficient decision-making.

Requirements

• Possess over 12 years of experience leading large-scale technical programs in high-growth environments focused on distributed systems and software engineering.
• Demonstrate a proven capacity for strategic technical leadership, influencing technical direction and architectural decisions at the VP/SVP level, with a history of guiding programs through complex technical shifts.
• Exhibit expert-level proficiency in defining execution strategies for programs involving hundreds of engineers, with a strong ability to foresee integration risks and failure points.
• Possess exceptional skills in executive communication, translating highly technical challenges into strategic business narratives and building consensus among senior leaders with competing interests.
• Display deep technical understanding of cloud-scale infrastructure, API-first design principles, and distributed systems, with a track record of effectively engaging with Staff, Principal, and Distinguished Engineers.
• Show a history of building and scaling operational readiness frameworks using self-service tools to report status, actions, and key performance indicators across a multi-thousand-person R&D organization.
• Have a demonstrated ability to manage ambiguity, creating effective execution structures in dynamic environments with evolving specifications, technologies, and market demands.
• Hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to have

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of technical program management experience at hyperscale or Fortune 100 cloud software/infrastructure companies.
• Expertise in global communications (Telephony, SMS, CPaaS) or high-throughput distributed platforms.
• Experience leading major organizational transformations, such as significant cloud migrations or foundational platform re-architectures.

Skills & tools

• Technical Program Management
• Strategic Planning
• Cross-functional Leadership
• Distributed Systems
• Cloud Infrastructure
• API Design
• Risk Management
• Executive Communication
• Agile Methodologies

Practical notes

• This role is remote within the United States.
• Ad-hoc in-person reporting may be required for team gatherings, off-sites, or customer meetings.
• Compensation ranges vary by
• Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont, Washington D.C.: $188,240.00 - $235,000.00
• New York, New Jersey, Washington State, California (outside San Francisco Bay Area): $199,280.00 - $249,100.00
• San Francisco Bay Area, California: $221,360.00 - $276,700.00
• This role may be eligible for Twilio's equity and corporate bonus plans.
• Benefits include health insurance, 401(k) retirement, paid sick time, paid personal time off, and paid parental leave.
• Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.