Senior Manager-Tech Project Management

Company: American Express
Location: Phoenix
Posted on: January 9, 2026

Job Description:

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. As part of Team Amex, youll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career. Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express. About the Team Our Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) & Application Support organization ensures the availability, stability, and performance of critical platforms across the enterprise. We focus on incident response, operational readiness, reliability engineering, platform health, and continuous improvement across our production environment. We partner closely with engineering, product, architecture, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and business teams to deliver resilient, always-on services. About the Role We are seeking a Senior Manager, Technical Project Management to lead strategic programs, operational governance, and cross-functional delivery across SRE & Application Support. In this role, you will align reliability and operational priorities to organizational strategy, drive delivery across multiple engineering teams, own executive-level reporting and dashboards, and lead financial, resource, and long-range planning. You will also moderate key forums such as townhalls, leadership reviews, operational updates, and platform health discussions. This is a high-impact role requiring strong communication, strategic thinking, disciplined execution, and comfort navigating technical and operational environments. Key Responsibilities 1. Strategic Leadership & OKR Alignment • Partner with SRE, Application Support, and Engineering leadership to define strategic imperatives for platform reliability, stability, and operational excellence. • Lead the OKR lifecycle including development, alignment, tracking, measurement, and quarterly business reviews. • Ensure programs, financial investments, and resource plans directly support strategic priorities and measurable outcomes. • Prioritize initiatives based on impact, risk, and alignment to long-term objectives. 2. Program & Delivery Leadership • Lead cross-functional programs focused on improving platform reliability, reducing incidents, enhancing operational readiness, and maturing service health. • Oversee multiple workstreams simultaneously, driving clear plans, milestones, dependencies, and risk mitigation. • Run platform health campaigns such as patching uplift, service hardening, automation, observability, and production hygiene initiatives. • Facilitate operational routines including SRE councils, production health reviews, application support meetings, and technical readiness checkpoints. 3. Executive Communication & Reporting • Create and deliver executive-level presentations, dashboards, and narrative updates for senior leadership. • Publish weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports covering incident trends, outage metrics, SLA/SLO performance, capacity indicators, and progress against OKRs. • Translate complex engineering and operational data into insights that support strategic decisions. • Prepare messaging and content for leadership forums, business reviews, and org-wide communication. 4. Financial & Resource Planning • Own financial tracking and forecasting for SRE & Application Support programs including project budgets, operational spend, and vendor costs. • Lead resource planning and capacity modeling for engineering and support teams. • Support annual planning and long-range planning (LRP), ensuring alignment between investment priorities and strategic imperatives. • Provide visibility into budget-to-actuals, resource allocation, and funding needs across critical reliability initiatives. 5. Cross-Functional & Stakeholder Leadership • Build strong partnerships across Engineering, Product, Architecture, Infrastructure, Risk, and Business teams. • Moderate and lead key organizational forums including townhalls, leadership meetings, planning sessions, and operational reviews. • Influence senior stakeholders, resolve conflicts, facilitate decision-making, and ensure alignment across distributed teams. • Act as a central coordination point during key events such as major incidents, releases, migrations, and compliance-driven programs. 6. Organizational & People Leadership • Help mature TPM practices across the organization including templates, cadences, reporting standards, and governance models. • Support onboarding, professional development, engagement activities, and culture-building efforts. • Promote a culture of collaboration, transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement aligned with SRE principles. Basic Qualifications • 12 years of experience in Technical Program Management, Technical Project Management, Program Management, or similar roles supporting engineering, infrastructure, SRE, or application support teams. • Proven experience leading large, cross-functional technical programs in complex or enterprise environments. • Strong expertise in building executive-level presentations, dashboards, and analytics using PowerPoint and Excel. • Hands-on experience managing financials, forecasting, resource planning, and long-range strategic planning for technology teams. • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex concepts for technical and non-technical audiences. • Highly organized and effective at managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced, dynamic environment. • Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Information Systems, Business, or related field—or equivalent experience. Preferred Qualifications • Experience working with or supporting SRE, reliability engineering, production support, or operations teams. • Familiarity with incident, problem, and change management practices and ITSM tools such as ServiceNow or JIRA. • High-level understanding of SRE principles such as SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, observability, and reliability metrics. • Experience in a regulated industry (e.g., financial services, healthcare, government). • Prior people leadership experience, particularly managing Program Managers or TPMs. Why You’ll Love This Role • High exposure and partnership with senior engineering and business leadership. • Opportunity to shape the operating model for a mission-critical reliability organization. • Direct impact on platform stability, customer experience, and enterprise resilience. • A culture of collaboration, integrity, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Keywords: American Express, Phoenix , Senior Manager-Tech Project Management, IT / Software / Systems , Phoenix, Arizona