Director Technical Program Manager (IC)

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

The Digital Enablement team at Visa is hiring experienced Technical Program Managers (TPMs) to build and deliver advanced services and capabilities for Visa’s customers. TPMs work closely with product management and software engineering leaders to define, plan, and prepare high-quality solutions for successful delivery. TPMs provide structure and leadership in the early stages of the product lifecycle, ensuring business needs are clearly understood and translated into actionable requirements.

Essential Functions

• Business enablement: Engage with product managers and key stakeholders to understand business problems, objectives, and timelines. Shape product concepts and work with product and engineering teams to identify strategic approaches and solution options. Ensure business needs are clearly articulated, prioritized, and aligned with strategic goals.
• Problem statements and success criteria: Create high-quality problem statements that concisely define the issue, context, scope, and impact. Define measurable business success criteria for every initiative. Build shared understanding among stakeholders to ensure alignment before engineering work begins.
• Product and solution definition: Collaborate with product management and engineering to translate business needs into clear requirements and high-level solution options, including data flows and system interactions. Ensure requirements are complete, actionable, and understood by all stakeholders.
• Planning: Lead planning activities to ensure features and initiatives are well-defined, prioritized, feasible, and ready for engineering teams to estimate and execute.
• User experience: Partner with UX/UI designers and engineers to define intuitive and engaging user experiences that address customer needs.
• Backlog management: Own and manage the product backlog, including prioritization, definition, and refinement of epics and features. Ensure the product backlog is clear, unambiguous, and complete, providing engineering with the information needed to confidently estimate and plan the next sprint. 
• Technical expertise: Develop a deep understanding of the product’s technical architecture and proposed designs to validate that solutions meet business needs, define work in alignment with technical realities, anticipate dependencies, and assess the impact of proposed plans.
• Engineering improvements: Provide leadership on “shift-left” goals such as automation, AI adoption, security, and quality. Collaborate with engineering to drive initiatives that improve engineering planning accuracy, velocity, metrics, and product health.
• Dependency and risk management: Identify and document dependencies and risks early in the process. Coordinate with relevant teams to resolve issues and mitigate risks before work begins.
• Stakeholder communication: Facilitate transparent, regular communication to manage stakeholder expectations. Ensure all teams are informed about requirements, plans, and status.
• Expectation management: Align engineering plans with business expectations and proactively manage those expectations to reflect what is achievable.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Note: This role does not offer relocation assistance or immigrations support now or in the future.

Basic Qualifications

• 10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications

• 5 or more years of experience in technical program management, product management, or engineering leadership, delivering software or platform solutions from concept through launch.
• Proven ability to translate business needs into actionable technical requirements, workflows, and system interaction diagrams.
• Deep familiarity with at least one relevant domain: AI/ML, data science, UX/UI, native mobile (iOS/Android), cloud/hybrid infrastructure, cloud-native technologies, Kubernetes, DevOps/automation, or analytics dashboards.
• Demonstrated success managing product backlogs, epics, and user stories in agile tools such as Jira and Confluence.
• Experience leading cross-functional planning, dependency mapping, and risk mitigation for complex, multi-team initiatives.
• Strong stakeholder communication skills with a track record of aligning engineering deliverables to business goals

Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements: This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements: This position will be performed in an office setting.  The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer.  Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.  Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.

U.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated salary range for a new hire into this position is 160,600.00 to 232,900.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity. Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401 (k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.