Palo Alto, CA | Full-Time | On-site
About Nace AI:
Nace AI is an enterprise AI product and research company in Palo Alto (backed by General Catalyst, Walden Catalyst, and Intel). We build long-running AI agents powered by our own SLMs and metamodels — we started with financial audit and accounting workflows and are expanding from there. Real enterprise deployments, not demos.
Role Overview:
As our first Technical Program Manager, you will be the operating system behind our product execution. Nace.AI moves fast — research, engineering, product, and domain experts (auditors, tax and compliance specialists) all ship in parallel, and you will be the person who keeps every workstream visible, sequenced, and on schedule. You will oversee all product activity from roadmap to release: translating priorities into concrete plans, tracking deliverables and deadlines across teams, surfacing risks before they become slips, and making sure the right people have the right information at the right time. This role demands exceptional communication and organizational skills, technical fluency to engage credibly with engineers, and the judgment to know when to drive, when to escalate, and when to get out of the way.
Key Responsibilities:
Own program management for all product development activity — plan, track, and drive deliverables, milestones, and deadlines across engineering, research, product, and domain-expert teams.
Run the operating cadence: sprint planning, standups, launch reviews, and leadership status updates that keep execution visible and accountable.
Build and maintain roadmaps, timelines, and cross-team dependency maps; identify critical paths and sequence work accordingly.
Proactively identify risks, blockers, and resourcing gaps — escalate early, propose mitigations, and drive them to resolution.
Coordinate product launches end-to-end, including release readiness, cross-functional checklists, and post-launch follow-through.
Serve as the communication hub between technical and non-technical stakeholders — translate engineering progress into clear, decision-ready updates for leadership.
Establish lightweight, scalable program management processes and tooling standards as the company grows — enough structure to move fast, never so much that it slows us down.
Qualifications:
4+ years of experience as a Technical Program Manager, Program Manager, or similar role driving complex, cross-functional technical programs.
Outstanding written and verbal communication skills — you make complex technical progress legible to any audience, and your updates are the ones people actually read.
Exceptional organizational and scheduling ability: you can hold many parallel workstreams in your head and never let a deadline surprise anyone.
Sufficient technical fluency to engage credibly with engineers on scope, dependencies, and tradeoffs (experience with AI/ML products a strong plus).
Proven track record of shipping: programs you ran landed on time, and stakeholders trusted your reporting.
Fluency with modern program management and collaboration tooling (Linear, Jira, Notion, or similar).
Bias for action and comfort with ambiguity — you create structure where none exists.
BS degree in a technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience at an early-stage or high-growth startup where you built program management practices from scratch.
Experience managing programs involving ML/LLM product development — model releases, evaluation cycles, or data pipelines.
Familiarity with enterprise software delivery in regulated domains (finance, audit, compliance, healthcare).
Experience coordinating launches involving both software engineering and subject-matter-expert workflows.
Why Nace AI?
Pedigree: Work with a team from top-tier institutions and companies, backed by the best VCs in the world.
Impact: As our first TPM, you will define how a company aiming to be the "OS" for professional knowledge executes — your systems become the company's systems.
Competitive Package: Silicon Valley-standard salary, significant equity, and premium benefits.