Senior Strategic Programme Manager (SaaS)

At Zendesk we are looking for an experienced SaaS Senior Strategic Program Manager to drive delivery success within one of our largest EMEA customer accounts. Operating at the centre of a complex, multi-market stakeholder landscape, your focus will be to ensure plans translate into execution, commitments are met, and outcomes are delivered in line with the customer’s strategic goals.

What you will be doing:

• Customer Accountability, Stakeholder Leadership and Influence: Establish yourself as a trusted, high-impact partner within the customer organisation, building relationships across executive sponsors, programme owners, and operational teams.
• Build strong executive and working-level relationships, facilitate decision-making forums, and hold the customer organisation accountable for their actions, resourcing, and delivery milestones, ensuring commitments are converted into measurable progress.
• Drive alignment on scope, priorities, outcomes, and responsibilities across customer and internal teams.
• Influence outcomes without direct authority, with demonstrable experience driving outcomes and accountability within customer organisations where you do not manage the stakeholders directly.

Operational Excellence and Continuous Improvement:

• Implement pragmatic program management frameworks that improve predictability, reporting quality, and stakeholder alignment.
• Manage program escalations, ensuring issues are handled quickly with appropriate visibility and resolution paths.
• Identify systemic opportunities to improve ways of working across teams and markets, including templates, cadences, RACI, and governance rhythms.
• Lead and coordinate end-to-end RFI and RFP responses for major initiatives within the account.
• Proactively identify misalignment or delivery risk and intervene early through structured conversations, escalation pathways, and decision forums.
• Build and maintain an end-to-end view of all programs and projects across the account, including interdependencies across workstreams, markets, timelines, customer prerequisites such as data readiness, approvals, and change management.
• Track progress, risks, issues, actions, and decisions (RAID), ensuring transparency and predictable delivery outcomes.
• Drive operational cadence such as weekly standups, checkpoints, and delivery reviews to keep work moving and unblock bottlenecks.
• Own the end-to-end Steering Committee process as the central governance forum for the account. Prepare and maintain monthly Steering Committee decks with clear status, outcomes, milestones, risks, dependencies, and decisions required.

Internal Stakeholders Interface:

• Act as the technical bridge into Product and Engineering, driving customer-specific needs through internal product channels while aligning to broader product strategy.
• Manage workstreams, timelines, and contributors across Account teams, Solution Architects, and other internal stakeholders.
• Coordinate input across Account, Product, Engineering, Professional Services, and Success to deliver a seamless experience and consistent technical narrative.
• Ensure technical documentation and decision trails are maintained to support delivery, change control, and stakeholder alignment.
• Partner with Sales, Solution Consultants and Solution Architects to scope new initiatives, validate the delivery approach, and confirm customer readiness.
• Work alongside Professional Services delivery teams through project execution to drive momentum, remove blockers, and set projects up for successful delivery across markets.

What you will bring to the role:

• Fluency in English written and spoken.
• Program Management: Experience leading Program management excellence, with strong command of dependency management, critical path planning, RAID, governance, and multi-project coordination across markets.
• Strong proficiency with program management and related tools such as Asana to track initiatives.
• Strong Interpersonal and communication skills: Able to translate between technical teams and business outcomes.
• Organisation, clarity and accountability skills: Ability to build structure, momentum, and clear accountability to programs spanning business and technical teams.
• Strong attention to detail but equally with the ability to maintain executive-level clarity and narrative.
• Exceptional communication and facilitation: Being confident to run executive forums, steering committees, and complex workshops, able to drive decisions, challenge constructively, and secure follow-through.
• Ability to stay calm and lead effectively through last‐minute escalations - assessing what’s happening, understanding the risk, aligning internal and customer stakeholders around a clear plan and message, and driving accountability to secure fast decisions.
• Proven technical literacy and experience leading complex technical programs in a SaaS environment.

Our Way of working:

At Zendesk, we embrace the hybrid work model (2 times in offices) to give you the best of both worlds. While we value flexibility, coming into the office is where the magic happens—it’s our dedicated space to thrive through face-to-face collaboration and real-time innovation while you can enjoy our amazing office perks.

Please note that in this role you may be required to travel from time to time to meet our customers on their premises or for any other business activities. Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love. Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law. Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster inclusivity in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please contact us. Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process.