Technical Program Manager

Job Description

Job Description

About us

Pocket Prep is a leading mobile and web-based learning platform offering efficient and affordable study solutions for professional certifications. We believe that education should be within everyone’s reach. Professional certification exams are often a stressful and expensive barrier to career advancement - Pocket Prep strives to prepare our members to pass the first time with confidence.

Product at Pocket Prep

Our small team is highly collaborative and passionate about helping our customers succeed. We are a bottom-up culture where product teams are empowered to determine the path to results through experimentation and collaboration with strong partners in design, engineering, and marketing. We emphasize accessibility, affordability, and quality in our products.

About the Role

As our Technical Program Manager, you’ll be the connective tissue that keeps our fast-moving teams aligned and delivering. You’ll orchestrate complex, cross-functional initiatives from idea to launch, identifying dependencies and creating the systems that allow us to scale with speed and precision. This is a high-impact role where you’ll dive deep into the details while keeping a clear view of the bigger picture — ensuring smooth execution across multiple squads and projects. If you thrive on solving puzzles, building processes that empower teams, and being at the center of innovation, this is your chance to shape how a small but mighty team delivers on a bold vision.

What You Will Do

Continuously improve operational systems – Optimize tools, workflows, and async rituals to reduce friction and increase product team velocity.

Track team-wide project status & delivery flow – Maintain visibility into what's in progress, what’s blocked, and what’s at risk across projects / squads. Manage dependencies and communication between squads, dev leads, and the maintenance team.

Facilitate planning processes – Drive rituals (bug triage, maintenance team, product team planning) that keep work organized and teams unblocked.

Project management for large, cross-platform projects

Owns cross-platform project timelines and ensure teams are on track to deliver

Facilitates communication across stakeholders (PMs, Eng, Design, leadership)

Track dependencies and risks before they cause slippage

Maintain project docs , timelines, and progress boards

Drive accountability for delivery milestones

Coordinate ticket writing & backlog hygiene – Ensure stories are clear, well-scoped, and ready for development.

About You

We’re looking for someone who has the following :

Required

3+ years in a Technical Program Manager, Delivery Manager, or Product Operations role

Excellent technical fluency — can collaborate with engineers and translate complexity into clarity

Excellent written communication and organizational systems thinking

Comfortable driving process in environments without formal agile or scrum structures

Expert in Jira

Able to move between detail and strategy — from writing subtasks to reviewing cross-team delivery timelines

Located in the Durham, NC area

Preferred

Familiarity with continuous discovery or empowered product team models

And exhibits the following qualities :

Great communication, collaboration, and active listening skills

Utilizes an ethical, data-driven and humanistic approach to decision making and negotiation

Prioritizes product quality over delivery speed

High emotional intelligence

Minimizes scope creep and keeps the team focused on the core goal

Ability to thrive in a small team environment

You are also excited about our culture :

Embrace a spirit of improvement and welcome feedback

Choose curiosity instead of judgment

Share your opinions and perspectives, and kindly disagree when you see things differently

Craft is important to you; You prefer to do things well instead of rushed

Love for continued learning individually and as a team, as well as making education more accessible for others

Benefits :

Stability : We're 10+ years old, 100% profitable without investor backing, and we continue to have year-over-year growth.

Work / Life Balance : Freedom to live your life while accomplishing something awesome for everyone in education. Flexible PTO and a 3-week company-wide holiday break from mid-December through New Year.

Competitive Compensation : Generous profit-sharing program and base pay. This role is targeted to pay $141,200 based on experience.

100% Healthcare : We cover all of our employees' healthcare premiums because we are invested in your well-being. We also cover 80% of dependents.

Remote Flexibility : You can work where and when you are most effective. We have an office in downtown Durham and are supportive of remote work options.

Give Back : We are active participants in our communities through volunteer partnerships with local nonprofits. We offer VTO (volunteer time off) for independent engagement with your community.

Compensation Range : $141.2K