Scaled Program Lead

The Opportunity 

Adobe’s Unified Platform is operating at significant scale: hundreds of concurrent programs, thousands of interdependent work items, and globally distributed product, program, user experience, and technical groups. Individual Program Managers focus on execution within their portfolios. Meanwhile, the organization requires a system-wide program oversight capability to identify risks earlier, improve predictability, and evolve delivery continuously.  

This high-leverage role of Scaled Program Management Lead was developed to meet that need. It builds on the core expectations of a Lead Program Manager—strong execution, cross‑functional leadership, and delivery accountability—while extending them across the platform. Rather than owning a bounded portfolio, this role establishes the mechanisms, data, and operating model required to manage world-class delivery at scale. 

This is an individual contributor role for a highly experienced, “six-sigma-type” program leader. The candidate must understand how software is built and delivered. They will collaborate closely with development teams. They will then transform those insights into scalable systems and approaches for the wider organization.  

At the scale of our platform, small improvements in focus, predictability, and flow translate into outsized impact. This role exists to institutionalize those improvements—to make data‑driven, scalable delivery part of how the platform operates every day, not a one‑off effort. This approach ensures that how we work evolves as fast as what we build. 

What You’ll Do 

Platform‑Scale Program Leadership 

• Operate horizontally to provide system‑level insight into delivery health, risks, dependencies, and bottlenecks across hundreds of active programs and development teams. 

• Establish and run scalable program management mechanisms that complement (not replace) portfolio Program Managers and engineering leadership. 

• Act as a trusted partner to platform and executive leadership by framing delivery trade‑offs, systemic risks, and opportunities using data‑backed insights. 

Data‑Driven Risk & Opportunity Management 

• Leverage JIRA, GitHub, and related delivery systems to surface leading indicators of execution risk, capacity imbalance, and dependency friction. 

• Apply analytical thinking and AI‑assisted techniques to move from reactive status reporting to predictive insights (e.g., cycle time trends, backlog health, delivery confidence). 

• Identify recurring structural issues and translate them into actionable interventions, tooling improvements, or operating model changes. 

Scaled Systems & Ways of Working 

• Invent and institutionalize scalable mechanisms that improve clarity, focus, and flow across teams without adding unnecessary process overhead. 

• Partner with existing Program Managers to standardize where it helps, while preserving flexibility for different product and engineering contexts. 

• Continuously evaluate and evolve program management practices based on real‑world outcomes and data, not theory. 

Grounded Execution Perspective 

• Stay closely connected to on‑the‑ground execution alongside engineering groups to ensure insights and mechanisms reflect real delivery realities.  

• Translate hands‑on