Senior Manager, Program Mgmt, Strategy & AI-Enabled Delivery

The Company

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy.

We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards. Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade.

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day. We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary:

This leader owns the invest side of Enterprise Systems & Employee Technology. That means how we plan, fund, deliver and prove the value of technology investments: the three-year and one-year plans, portfolio governance, program management, and the methodology and governance the delivery model runs on. The role also leads ESET’s move from a standard delivery model to fully AI-enabled delivery.

Job Description:

Essential Responsibilities:

• Provide strategic oversight and management of program operations, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and driving innovation within the DCCE (Data Center & Cloud Evolution) space.
• Oversee the traceability of data center assets, including power and space considerations, to ensure accurate planning and optimization driven by program outcomes.
• Partner with business unit teams to strategically plan and implement initiatives that address technical debt, optimize underutilized resources, and improve data center workload efficiency.
• Monitor and report on cloud-driven workload transformations, aligning efforts to optimize data center operations and reduce redundant resource utilization.
• Evaluate and refine processes within operations, leading initiatives to build and implement the next level of operational improvements.
• Manage and control production applications and services across all PayPal CN data centers, ensuring high availability and operational excellence.
• Ensure site reliability by leading efforts to resolve cross-border operational issues in collaboration with global, cross-functional teams.
• Create and implement robust processes to enhance production stability, leveraging software development to support production operations effectively.
• Lead system monitoring initiatives by establishing standard monitoring policies, supporting event processing, and driving timely issue resolution to maintain operational integrity.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Experience leading others

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

Responsibilities include:

• AI-enabled delivery transformation — Own the roadmap and operating model for moving ESET from standard delivery to fully AI-enabled delivery across the whole lifecycle: requirements and design, build and data, testing, go-live and cutover, and hypercare through handover to Run. Set targets by value stream and platform. Lead the change, including team shapes, roles and skills for human-plus-AI work.

• AI-enabled delivery process — Define, stage by stage, where AI is applied, where humans decide, and how work hands off, with quality gates, traceability and audit evidence at each stage. Cover requirements capture and solution scoping, design, data readiness and migration, test design and automation, release and go-live readiness, and hypercare triage and knowledge transfer to Run.

• Methodology and governance — Own the delivery methodology and playbook (SDLC, agile and hybrid) that all value streams follow, replacing local approaches: stage gates, definitions of done, production-readiness and release criteria. Own the governance framework around it at portfolio, program and delivery level: forums, decision rights, RACI, escalation paths and decision logs. Publish, train, assess adherence, and revise both as AI-enabled delivery changes the model.

• Tooling, enablement and adoption — Identify, standardize and enable the AI tools for each delivery stage, working with platform owners. Run training and enablement. Track adoption and outcomes by value stream, platform and stage, so every analyst, engineer, tester and consultant is augmented and the tools are used well, not just licensed. Build-level engineering tools sit with the Run-side lead; this role makes sure they fit the end-to-end process.

• Delivery economics and sourcing — Reset estimation, level-of-effort conventions, capacity plans and budget requests for AI-enabled delivery. Write productivity commitments into vendor and integrator contracts and track the savings. Plan the mix of employees, contractors, vendors and agents.

• Strategy and planning framework — Own the three-year and one-year planning cycles: gate criteria, business-case and solution-scoping templates, and entry and exit criteria. Turn ESET strategy and operating-model direction into plans each stream can execute against.

• Portfolio and investment governance — Set how investments are categorized (Run, Grow, Transform), prioritized, funded and reviewed, with CapEx and OpEx treatment built into the standard. Run the portfolio review. Partner with the Run-side lead on the Run, Grow and Transform mix and on Run capacity.

• Work classification and intake — Own the standard that classifies work as projects, managed enhancements or Run tasks by size and planning cadence, with one intake and clear routing to tooling, funding and capacity.

• Program leadership — Own plan, status and executive readouts for the highest-priority cross-stream programs. Surface risks and dependencies early and escalate with a recommendation. Coach program leads across the organization.

• Total-cost resourcing — Standardize how budget requests are built: current capacity plus new headcount and contract workers at a blended rate, reviewed by Finance before submission. Keep the portfolio of record (ServiceNow SPM) reconciled across the three-year, one-year and in-year views.

• Benefits realization — Define how committed savings, such as insourcing, vendor consolidation and AI productivity gains, are baselined, tracked to actuals and supported under audit.

• Delivery health and reporting — Build the delivery scorecard and a consistent RAG rollup across value streams: flow, quality, release discipline, hypercare burden, cycle time and cost per outcome, measured before and after AI-enabled delivery. Assess teams against the engineering quality maturity framework.

• Audit-ready investment governance — Keep business cases, funding decisions and benefits claims supported for internal audit and Finance review.

• Executive advisory — Advise ESET leadership on investment trade-offs, sequencing, delivery risk and the pace of the AI transformation.
  

Expected Qualifications

• Program and portfolio leadership (8+ years in IT program management, portfolio management, PMO leadership, delivery transformation or IT strategy): led complex cross-functional enterprise application, ERP or platform programs, and built or matured portfolio governance across organizations without direct authority over the teams measured.
• Delivery operating model and AI-enabled delivery: redesigned an SDLC or delivery operating model across multiple teams (stage gates, controls, metrics), and led adoption of AI-assisted delivery across lifecycle stages (requirements, testing, release, support) with measured outcomes.
• Technology planning and financial acumen: ran an annual or multi-year technology planning cycle with Finance (business cases, budget requests); CapEx and OpEx, total cost of ownership and benefits realization.
• Also expected: working knowledge of delivery control and audit requirements (change, release, SOX IT general controls); portfolio tooling such as ServiceNow SPM or an equivalent PPM platform; managing system integrators and vendors against contracted scope and savings.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with AI tools across the delivery lifecycle

• SAP S/4HANA or other large ERP transformation experience

• Financial services or another regulated environment

• PMP, PgMP, SAFe or Technology Business Management credentials

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately. To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us.

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits:

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most. We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

Who We Are:

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at paypalglobaltalentacquisition@paypal.com.

Belonging at PayPal:

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.