Principal Technical Program Manager, Nova Program

ezCater

Principal Technical Program Manager at ezCater overseeing the migration to a microservices platform through the Nova program. Driving integration and coordination across workstreams in a leading food tech company.

Posted 5/27/2026full-timeRemote • Massachusetts • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $188,000 - $284,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Microservices

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Drive each workstream through milestone planning, baseline, and replan cycles; ensure capability milestones, dependencies, and target dates are clearly documented and current.
Manage the critical path and surface schedule risk early; partner with workstream tech leads to negotiate trade-offs when a milestone slips.
Maintain the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) from workstream → capability → milestone, and keep the program schedule and goals-to-milestones mapping in sync.
Identify and track cross-workstream dependencies (e.g., User/Identity ↔ Payments on user-payment-method association; MDM ↔ User/Identity on user authority; Golden Path ↔ every downstream workstream on the cookie-cutter service template).
Drive stub/contract-first patterns so workstreams can move in parallel rather than serially; escalate to the Core Team when a dependency becomes a blocker.
Run the cadence (working sessions, design reviews, integration checkpoints) needed to keep dependencies from slipping.
Maintain the program-wide view of resourcing across all workstreams — FTE allocations, contractor placements (BairesDev, Slalom, and others), and open roles — and keep the picture current as workstreams ramp.
Surface resource bottlenecks early: where a workstream is under-resourced for its scope, where a critical hire is gating downstream velocity (e.g., AI DX Lead, Platform SEM, workstream tech leads), and where contractor capacity is outpacing the team’s ability to absorb it.
Partner with workstream tech leads and the hiring side of the org to coordinate onboarding of new FTEs and contractors — ensuring access, ramp plans, and first assignments are in place so people are productive in weeks, not months.
Track contractor engagements (start dates, end dates, scope, renewal decisions) and ensure transitions in and out of the program don’t leave knowledge gaps.
Own the Nova program Heartbeat report (biweekly written status to stakeholders) and the weekly executive roll-up — assemble inputs from workstream leads, draft, and publish.
Maintain the RAID log (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) and the risk register; ensure risk owners are named, mitigation plans are current, and escalations happen on time.
Run the Core Team cadence: agendas, decisions, action items, follow-through; make sure decisions are documented and reachable.
Communicate program status and risks honestly — to workstream leads, the Core Team, and (where appropriate) ELT stakeholders.
Operate the scope and schedule change control process: classify changes (within-milestone, cross-workstream, program-level), route them to the right decision authority, and document outcomes.
Maintain the program decision log; ensure architectural and program-level decisions are recorded and accessible.
Steward the program-management artifacts (schedule, RAID, risk register, communications plan, stakeholder register) so they remain trustworthy operating tools rather than wallpaper.
Coach new workstream tech leads through milestone planning and the Nova program rhythm; help them produce a credible baselined milestone plan within their first 4-6 weeks.
Identify and fix friction in the program operating model — meeting overhead, status reporting load, tooling gaps — so workstreams spend their time building, not reporting.
Facilitate planning and timing of transitions as Nova workstreams move from dedicated (or hybrid) program staffing back into the permanent Pillars and Pods organizational structure — typically once a workstream’s initial services are production-operational and out of intensive build.
Partner with Pillar leadership to identify the right transition point per workstream, sequence transitions so they don’t collide with Pillar BAU commitments, and confirm receiving Pods are ready (capacity, on-call, ownership clarity).
Coordinate the handoff itself: service ownership, documentation, on-call rotations, backlog transfer, and any residual Nova-program obligations — so nothing falls between Nova and the receiving Pillar.
Maintain a forward view of upcoming transitions in the program schedule so they are planned for, not surprises.

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years as a technical program manager on platform or infrastructure programs.
Direct experience on at least one large monolith-to-microservices or major platform re-architecture program — running the schedule, dependencies, and cross-team coordination, not just status reporting.
Strong technical fluency: comfortable reading architecture diagrams, OpenAPI specs, event schemas, and sequence diagrams; able to hold their own in a room with staff and principal engineers.
Demonstrated ability to drive integrated schedules across 8-15 parallel workstreams with hard dependencies, in environments where work is genuinely being designed and re-planned in flight (not waterfall delivery against a fixed plan).
Experience managing resourcing and staffing across a multi-workstream program — tracking allocations, surfacing bottlenecks, and onboarding a mix of FTEs and contractors at pace.
Experience handing program-built capabilities back to permanent product/engineering teams — understands what makes a clean transition versus one that leaves orphaned services and unhappy receiving teams.
Excellent written communication: can draft a clear, honest, two-page program status that an executive will actually read.
Practiced in modern program tooling (Jira, Linear, Smartsheet, Asana, or equivalent), and comfortable working in Google Workspace and Slack as the daily medium.
Comfortable with AI-first ways of working: uses Claude, Gemini, or comparable tools as a daily part of how they draft, analyze, and synthesize.
Bias to action; opinionated about how programs should run; willing to push back on the Core Team when the data calls for it.
Ability to travel up to 5 days per quarter for Together Weeks, team gatherings and other events, when applicable.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Market competitive salary
Stock options that you’ll help make worth a lot
12 paid holidays
Flexible PTO
401K with ezCater match
Health/dental/FSA
Long-term disability insurance
Mental health and family planning resources
Remote-hybrid work from our awesome Boston office OR your home OR a mixture of both home and office
A tremendous amount of responsibility and autonomy
Wicked awesome co-workers
Employee meal program (and many more goodies) when you’re in our office

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

technical program managementplatform programsinfrastructure programsmonolith-to-microservicesprogram re-architectureschedule managementdependency managementcross-team coordinationresource managementstaffing

Soft Skills

excellent written communicationbias to actionability to push backcoachingfacilitationrisk managementstakeholder communicationproblem-solvingteam collaborationadaptability