Senior Technical Program Manager

About this role

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk.

Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake.

Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.

US, East Coast Preferred

The role, in a nutshell:

Chainguard's security organization sits at the intersection of proactive, long-term initiatives and reactive, business-critical work. As we've grown, managing that balance, anticipating the downstream impact of changing priorities, and giving leadership a clear view of our security risk and exposure have become increasingly important, and increasingly complex.

We're looking for a Senior Technical Program Manager to bring structure and visibility to this space.

You'll operate horizontally across the security organization, partnering with Product Security, Cyber Resiliency, and Governance & Trust. While you'll be closely embedded with those teams in your day-to-day work, you'll also help coordinate priorities, dependencies, and execution across the broader security organization.

Your impact will extend well beyond security. Because security intersects with nearly every function at Chainguard — including engineering, product, legal, finance, sales, and marketing — you'll build the systems, processes, and relationships that enable effective collaboration across the company.

This is a senior, strategic role with substantial room to grow. You won't inherit a fully defined playbook; you'll help create it. You'll establish the processes, dashboards, and prioritization mechanisms that give the security organization greater clarity and leverage, and over time, expand that impact into broader company-wide programs and operating processes.

What you’ll do:

• Own workflow, project tracking, and dependency management across the three security teams, making it clear what’s on track, what’s at risk, and what downstream impact changes may have.

• Build and maintain dashboards and reporting that give company leadership a clear, durable view of security risk, exposure, and program health.

• Partner closely with your primary security team on day-to-day execution while supporting the other two teams as priorities and capacity allow.

• Make and communicate prioritization decisions when demand exceeds the security organization’s capacity — including finding alternatives and helping stakeholders understand trade-offs, rather than simply saying no.

• Design and implement lightweight processes that help security teams operate more effectively without creating unnecessary overhead for engineers.

• Work directly with product, engineering, and other partner teams to establish clear, effective ways of working with security.

• As the role grows, extend your impact beyond security by helping shape broader company processes, including how Chainguard approaches planning, prioritization, and cross-functional execution.

What we’re looking for:

• 5+ years of experience in program management, technical program management, or operations roles

• Meaningful experience in a broad, cross-functional operations or program management role, supporting many stakeholders across an organization rather than working within a single, self-contained team.

• Security experience is a plus, but not required. More important is the ability to operate effectively in a horizontal role with a large and diverse stakeholder group.

• A track record of building processes and exercising sound judgment in ambiguous environments, rather than defaulting to standard frameworks or playbooks.

• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to act as a strategic and consultative partner across functions.

• Experience managing competing priorities and communicating trade-offs, including difficult prioritization decisions, clearly and thoughtfully.

• Comfort working in a fast-moving, scaling environment where processes are still being built and refined.

Why this role:

Security work at Chainguard doesn’t follow a predictable schedule. Proactive initiatives and reactive, business-critical needs are constantly competing for the same time and attention. This role exists to bring structure to that tension — helping the security organization make deliberate choices about where to focus and how to respond when priorities inevitably shift.

At the same time, company leadership needs a clearer, more consistent view of our security posture, risk, and exposure than we currently have a dedicated mechanism to provide. You’ll build that reporting infrastructure and make it durable as the organization grows.

And because security intersects with nearly every part of the business, you’ll have an unusually broad view of how Chainguard operates. Over time, you’ll have the opportunity to take what you learn in security and apply it to larger, org-wide programs and processes — helping shape not just how security works, but how Chainguard works as a company.

Base Salary Range $153,000 — $180,000 USD

About Us

We live and breathe our company values:

• We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.

• We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.

• We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.

• We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.

A few of the benefits we o

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