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Salary: USD 181,125 - 289,800 / annual
Axon is seeking a Principal Technical Program Manager to join the Real-Time Operations team in Seattle. In this role, you will own highly complex and ambiguous technical programs spanning multiple teams and pillars, serving as a trusted partner to product, engineering, and senior leadership.
You will translate early-stage ideas and proposals into executable plans with clear requirements, milestones, dependencies, and success metrics. The Real-Time Operations team builds and maintains products for emergency responders using the Axon Fusus platform, where production outages or performance degradation lasting even minutes can have real impact. You will identify problems and opportunities before requirements exist, bring structure to ambiguity, build alignment across teams, and drive commitments that move work forward.
Key responsibilities include: owning end-to-end technical requirements and helping engineering teams evaluate architectural trade-offs; ensuring decisions prioritize scalability, reliability, availability, and long-term maintainability; managing program plans, schedules, resourcing, and change management while holding teams accountable; foreseeing and mitigating risks across teams and pillars; defining program success metrics and communicating results to leadership; leading technical discussions on system design and architecture; driving technical trade-off discussions with sound judgment; partnering with business, legal, information security, and policy stakeholders early; owning status and strategy communication at MBRs and senior review forums; advising product and engineering directors and VPs on program risks and execution strategy; building and improving architecture, process, and program documentation; mentoring TPMs and educating teams on program management practices; and working effectively across multiple time zones.
Within 90 days, you should own your portfolio and develop a clear written assessment of its current state, risks, dependencies, and opportunities. Within 6 months, cross-pillar commitments should be clear and holding, with leaders using your reporting to make decisions. Within 12 months, you should have delivered measurable results across multiple teams or pillars, with mechanisms you created being reused by other programs.
Requirements: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Science, or related field (Master's or PhD optional). 10+ years of experience managing complex software or hardware/software delivery. 2-3 years of experience as a technical individual contributor, engineer, or equivalent hands-on technical role, or comparable technical depth developed through your career. Record of leading large, cross-team or cross-pillar technical programs with significant ambiguity and executive visibility. Deep technical judgment and ability to evaluate end-to-end designs and identify risks in technical decisions. Strong command of program management practices including Scrum and Kanban. Proven ability to manage risks, dependencies, milestones, and status reporting. Experience advising product and engineering leaders and presenting program strategy to senior leadership. Ability to work through ambiguity and establish direction before complete requirements exist. Strong influencing and interpersonal skills including mentoring and building consensus. Strong written and verbal communication skills. Experience working across multiple time zones and distributed teams. Preference for experience with enterprise SaaS or mission-critical software.
