Lead Business Operations Program Manager, EPAD

About the Business Operations Program Management Team

Thumbtack’s Business Operations Program Management (BOPM) team drives many of our most critical strategic initiatives. We operate at the intersection of strategy and execution, partnering closely with senior leaders to scale operations, align teams, and deliver meaningful outcomes. With a company-wide perspective and deep involvement in day-to-day execution, we bring clarity to complexity and structure to ambiguity.

Reporting to the Director of BOPM, the team is embedded across functions to help teams work smarter and move faster. We design operational frameworks, launch new programs, and build scalable systems that endure. Our goal is simple: to ensure bold ideas move beyond concept and are delivered with impact.

About the Role

We’re hiring a Lead Business Operations Program Manager to support our Engineering, Product, Analytics, and Design (EPAD) organizations, some of the most technical and fast-moving teams at Thumbtack. In this role, you will own strategic initiatives end to end, partnering closely with functional leaders to identify opportunities, drive alignment, and implement solutions that enable teams to scale effectively.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in complexity, brings strong systems thinking, and is willing to dive in to make progress. You will serve as the connective tissue across functions, leading cross-team initiatives, enabling clear decision making, and ensuring EPAD teams have the tools, processes, and context they need to execute well. If you enjoy solving operational problems, driving cross-functional impact, and shaping how high-performing technology teams work, this role offers the chance to make a meaningful difference.

What you'll do

• Strategic Partnership and Execution: You will be a trusted partner to our Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and EPAD leaders, helping turn strategy into execution. This includes building thoughtful, phased plans that account for real-world constraints like team capacity, leadership alignment, and rollout timing. You will identify risks early, surface what is not being said in leadership discussions, and help drive the initiatives that meaningfully move the business forward.
• Operational Excellence and Team Coordination: You will not just run meetings, you will make them effective. You will design agendas around decisions that matter, keep fast-moving discussions focused, and ensure outcomes translate into clear action. When priorities compete, you will help navigate trade-offs, maintain momentum, and prevent teams from getting stuck.
• Cross-functional Collaboration and Alignment: This role serves as connective tissue across EPAD. You will identify when teams are working in parallel without coordination and step in to align efforts. You will ensure the right stakeholders are involved at the right moments and help teams share learnings rather than reinventing solutions.
• Project Management and Analytics: You will use data as a tool for decision making, not documentation. You will define what success looks like, build systems to track progress, and course-correct when needed. Whether launching a new process or sunsetting one that is no longer effective, your focus is on making it easier for teams to do their best work.
• Future of Work and Team Culture: You will help shape how EPAD teams operate in a virtual-first environment. This includes co-creating rituals that support strong asynchronous collaboration, designing in-person moments that build connection, and ensuring culture remains intentional as teams scale. You will also lead key people-focused workstreams, translating engagement insights into initiatives that improve employee experience and organizational health.

In order to be successful, you must bring

• 10+ years of experience in strategy, business operations, or program management roles within high-growth technology companies or similarly fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
• Direct experience supporting or partnering with technical organizations such as Product, Engineering, Analytics, or Design, with a strong understanding of how these teams operate and where friction tends to arise.
• Proven track record of leading cross-functional initiatives from zero to one, independently scoping work, building alignment, and driving execution without relying on a predefined roadmap.
• Experience working closely with executive stakeholders, translating loosely defined objectives into clear plans, influencing through insight rather than authority, and navigating shifting priorities with confidence.
• Demonstrated ability to bring clarity to complexity by defining success metrics, designing scalable workflows, and leveraging AI and automation tools to improve decision making and streamline operational processes.
• Strong operational instincts paired with strategic judgment, with experience building processes that endure because they work in practice, not just on paper.
• Industry experience in consumer marketplaces, SMB platforms, or tech-enabled services preferred, particularly in environments operating at meaningful scale.
• Proven experience building operational mechanisms that scale with a rapidly growing org—starting with lightweight, minimum-viable processes, then iterating based on adoption and outcomes (not opinions) to reduce coordination tax as headcount, scope, and dependencies expand.

Expected salary ranges

• For candidates living in San Francisco / Bay Area, San Jose, New York City, or Seattle metros, the expected salary range for the role is currently $212,400.00 - $259,600.00.
• For candidates living in Austin, TX or Washington DC metros or in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Washington states, the expected salary range for the role is currently $190,800.00 - $233,200.00.
• For candidates living in all other US locations, the expected salary range for this role is currently $180,900.00 - $221,100.00.

Actual offered salaries will vary and will be based on various factors, such as calibrated job level, qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role.