Senior Technical Program Manager (Data Platforms & Operations)

Overview

PlayStation isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. We’re recognized as a global leader in entertainment with the PlayStation family of products and services including PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Plus, and acclaimed PlayStation software titles from PlayStation Studios. We strive to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team. The PlayStation brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.

The Senior Technical Program Manager for Data Platforms & Operations will drive the planning, coordination, and delivery of complex initiatives across our cloud-based data platforms and their operations. In this role the successful candidate will work closely with engineering managers, SRE/operations teams, and data/AI engineering teams who own the data products and data services which rely on the efficient running and delivery of data platforms. Your role is to:

• Coordinate cross-team work so platform and operational changes land predictably and safely.
• Structure delivery (roadmaps, plans, dependencies, risks) for data platform programs.
• Improve operational performance by assisting engineering managers, ensuring metrics and runbooks are part of the delivery process.
• Provide transparency to leadership via clear, metric-led reporting on status, risk, and outcomes.

This is a senior individual contributor role suited to someone who is highly organised, data-driven, and comfortable working with technical stakeholders across a varied data ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

• Program & Delivery Management
  • Plan and run cross-platform programs for data platform and operational initiatives (e.g. major upgrades, reliability improvements, cost optimisation, new platform capabilities).
  • Build and maintain integrated program plans (scope, milestones, dependencies, risks, decision points) across multiple engineering and operations teams.
  • Facilitate regular delivery cadences (stand-ups, status reviews) with engineering managers and leads; ensure actions are owned and tracked to completion.
  • Ensure that program objectives are clearly defined, measurable, and aligned with business outcomes, such as:
    • Improved platform availability and reliability.
    • Reduced incident frequency and MTTR targets.
    • Improved data freshness, latency, and throughput for key workloads.
• Operational Coordination & Readiness
  • Partner with engineering managers, SREs, and operations teams to assist them in coordinating operational activities delivered by data platform teams.
  • Change calendars, release planning, and operational readiness reviews.
  • Operational playbooks and runbook readiness for new features or platform changes.
  • Coordinated communication during planned maintenance and impactful changes.
  • Align with service owners (engineering managers) on operational priorities and schedules, helping sequence work in a way that balances reliability, feature delivery, and cost.
• Measurement, Metrics & Reporting
  • Work with engineering managers and service owners to ensure platform and operational KPIs are part of the end delivery:
    • SLA/SLO/SLI for data platforms and pipelines (e.g. uptime, data freshness, query performance).
    • Operational metrics such as incident rate, MTTR, change success rate, and capacity utilisation.
  • Ensure consistent measurement and reporting of delivery metrics across programs and operational areas:
    • Curate and maintain dashboards and status reports for leadership.
    • Highlight trends, risks, and trade-offs in a clear and concise way.
  • Use analytics to prioritise improvements, identify systemic issues, and quantify impact of program work.
• Cross-Team Alignment & Communication
  • Facilitate coordination across:
    • Data platform engineering (cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, data platform services).
    • Data engineering and ETL/ELT teams.
    • AI/ML engineering teams consuming data platform capabilities.
    • Operations, SRE, and service desk teams.
  • Align teams on priorities, sequencing, and dependencies for shared initiatives, ensuring upstream and downstream impacts are understood.
  • Communicate program status to stakeholders at multiple levels:
    • Concise executive summaries of progress, risk, and impact.
    • Detailed views for engineering teams on dependencies, decisions, and next steps.
• Continuous Improvement & Governance
  • Support governance initiatives for data platforms as part of the delivery process:
    • Align teams on documenting and delivering templates/checklists for change reviews, and operational readiness.
  • Promote continuous improvement initiatives focused on:
    • Increasing automation in operations and delivery processes.
    • Reducing toil and manual coordination where possible.
    • Strengthening platform resilience and reducing operational risk.
  • Capture and socialise lessons learned across programs to improve future planning, estimation, and operational practices.

Experience Required

• Technical Program / Project Management
  • Significant experience (typically 7+ years) in technical program management or project management in a software, data, or cloud engineering context.
  • Proven track record of driving cross-team programs from planning through delivery, with demonstrable impact on reliability, performance, or efficiency.
• Operational & Reliability Focus
  • Experience working closely with operations, SRE, or platform teams on production services.
• Delivery Excellence
  • Strong skills in planning, dependency management, and risk management across multiple teams.
  • Comfortable operating in an agile environment, coordinating between different teams and methodologies.
  • Able to break down ambiguous objectives into clear, sequenced workstreams.
• Communication & Stakeholder Management
  • Excellent written and verbal communication; able to tailor information for engineers, managers, and senior leaders.
  • Effective at influencing without authority, building trust with engineering managers and cross-functional partners.
  • Comfortable facilitating workshops, retrospectives, and decision-making forums.
• Tools & Ways of Working
  • Proficient with tools such as JIRA, Confluence, and similar project tracking and documentation systems.

Experience (desirable)

• Cloud & Data Platform Familiarity
  • Working familiarity (conceptual and conversational) with AWS cloud services, Snowflake or similar cloud data warehouses, Kubernetes, and ETL/ELT data pipelines.
  • Some awareness of ITIL best practices for service management
  • Able to understand and discuss system architectures, operational constraints, and trade-offs with technical leads (you’re not expected to write production code).
• Operational & Reliability Focus

• Strong understanding of SLA, SLO, and SLI concepts and how they relate to reliability, customer experience, and business value.
• Experience in incident management, post-incident reviews, and operational readiness.

• Familiar with dashboards and monitoring tools (e.g., DataDog, CloudWatch, Grafana) from a program/metrics perspective.
• Experience working globally with a variety of cultures including Japan, India, Ireland and the U.S.

• A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field; or equivalent practical experience.
• Advanced degrees (e.g., MS, MBA) are a plus but not required.
• Industry certifications (e.g. AWS, PMP, Agile/PMI-ACP) are beneficial but not required.

Please note, Sony Interactive Entertainment conducts background checks at the offer stage for all new employees (which may include criminal background checks for some roles) and will need to process personal information to support these checks. Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more information about what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your data protection rights.

Equal Opportunity Statement: Sony is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender, race, religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, maternity or parental status, trade union membership or membership in any other legally protected category. We strive to create an inclusive environment, empower employees and embrace diversity. PlayStation is a Fair Chance employer and qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for employment.