Program Director

• Lead Zip’s most strategic, high-priority cross-functional programs and special projects, turning executive priorities into coordinated action and measurable business outcomes.

• Bring the judgment, influence, and program leadership to create clarity, alignment, and momentum across complex initiatives, integrations, and organizational transitions.

• Remote-first opportunity for US-based employees with the option to work in person from our Manhattan office.

Start your adventure with Zip

As a Program Director, you will operate at the center of Zip’s most complex and strategically important cross-functional initiatives. You will partner closely with executive leadership and teams across Product, Strategy, Engineering, Finance, Legal, Credit Risk, People, Commercial, and Delivery to translate strategy into execution and ensure critical programs achieve their intended business outcomes.

You will own the connective layer across these programs: understanding why the work matters, how individual initiatives contribute to broader business outcomes, where dependencies and risks sit, and when intervention is needed. For special projects, integrations, and organizational transitions, you will establish the roadmap, governance, decision structures, and operating rhythm from exploration and planning through execution, stabilization, and post-initiative optimization.

This is a senior individual contributor role with a high degree of autonomy and accountability for critical assignments. You will synthesize signals across stakeholders and workstreams, challenge assumptions, navigate competing priorities, and provide executives with concise, decision-oriented views of program health, business impact, risks, opportunities, and recommended actions.

While you will primarily operate at the program and enterprise level, you are comfortable going deeper when needed. When a critical initiative requires additional structure, alignment, or leadership, you can step in quickly, establish a path forward, unblock decisions, and restore momentum without creating unnecessary processes.

Interesting problems you'll get to solve

• Own the end-to-end health and coordination of Zip’s most complex, high-priority programs and special projects, spanning multiple initiatives, teams, and business priorities.

• Translate enterprise strategy into execution by defining intended outcomes, success measures, value-creation goals, priorities, sequencing, and trade-offs, and ensuring work remains aligned to broader business objectives.

• Develop and drive integrated roadmaps across product, technology, operations, people, finance, legal, commercial, and go-to-market workstreams where required.

• Serve as a central point of coordination across functions, creating clear ownership, decision rights, dependencies, milestones, and accountability for outcomes.

• Maintain a comprehensive view of program status, stakeholder signals, risks, decisions, resource constraints, and emerging issues; identify systemic risks, organizational constraints, and cross-program patterns that may not be visible within individual workstreams.

• Lead escalations and facilitate complex decision-making by bringing together the right stakeholders, clarifying options and trade-offs, challenging assumptions, and driving issues through resolution.

• Act as a trusted advisor to executive leadership on program direction, integration strategy, organizational implications, risks, opportunities, and decisions required.

• Establish lightweight governance, operating rhythms, reporting cadences, and sources of truth that create transparency and accountability without introducing unnecessary process.

• Lead or coordinate change-management and organizational-transition activities when relevant, partnering with People & Culture to support thoughtful onboarding, engagement, retention, and cultural alignment.

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Delivery, and business teams to connect detailed execution with the broader program view and ensure critical initiatives progress successfully through delivery and stabilization.

• Engage with leaders to ensure programs have the appropriate resources and capabilities, expertise, sponsorship, and decision-making support required to succeed.

• Leverage Jira, Confluence, AI, automation, and other modern tools to improve program visibility, executive communications, reporting, operational efficiency, and repeatability.

• Identify systemic opportunities to improve how Zip plans, integrates, and executes complex cross-functional work, building scalable approaches that can be reused across future strategic initiatives.

What success looks like

• Strategic initiatives deliver measurable business outcomes with clear ownership, timely decisions, and strong cross-functional alignment.

• Complex integrations and organizational transitions are coordinated smoothly with minimal disruption to customers and day-to-day operations.

• Program risks, dependencies, and trade-offs are surfaced early and actively managed before they materially impact outcomes.

• Executive stakeholders have a concise, trusted view of progress, decisions, blockers, value creation, and business impact.

• Teams have clear operating rhythms and sources of truth, while governance remains lightweight and fit for purpose.

• Zip develops scalable, repeatable approaches for future strategic programs, integrations, and transformations.

What you'll bring to the team

• Undergraduate degree in a technology discipline, graduate degree preferred

• Program or Project Management certification a plus

• 15+ years of experience in program management, strategy and operations, consulting, delivery management, technical program management, integration, transformation, or related leadership roles within technology organizations.

• 5+ years of experience leading complex work within financial technology, banking, payments, lending, or consumer financial services, with a strong understanding of the regulatory, operational, technology, and customer considerations that shape execution.

• Proven track record leading complex, cross-functional programs and special projects across multiple teams, functions, and initiatives, with accountability for outcomes rather than activity alone.

• Strong business acumen and the ability to quickly understand strategic and commercial drivers, define success measures, evaluate trade-offs, and connect execution to measurable business outcomes.

• Exceptional executive presence, stakeholder leadership, and influence, with the ability to build alignment across senior leaders and teams with competing priorities or perspectives.

• Strong executive communication and judgment, with the ability to synthesize complex information into clear narratives, surface the signals and decisions that matter, and manage escalations effectively.

• Ability to operate fluidly between strategy and execution, maintaining an enterprise-level perspective while going deeper when needed to resolve ambiguity, mitigate risk, unblock decisions, or restore momentum.

• Strong technical and delivery fluency, including an understanding of modern software delivery practices and the ability to partner effectively with Product, Engineering, and Delivery teams.

• Demonstrated ability to manage program-level risks, dependencies, capacity constraints, and decision structures, and to establish lightweight governance that creates clarity and accountability.

• Experience using Jira, Confluence, AI, automation, and modern program-management practices to create scalable sources of truth and improve visibility, communication, and operational efficiency.

• Calm, pragmatic, results-oriented leadership style with a focus on clarity, accountability, sound judgment, and momentum, with clear alignment to Zip’s values.

Leadership capabilities

• Customer First: Maintains focus on customer impact when making program, integration, and transf