How To Land A Technical Program Management (TPM) Job !

Take the TPM 101 course to learn the fundamental skills, levels and role expectations. This will help you map your current skills and experience to see what is transferable and what you need to focus on. Start writing a TPM focused resume and identify your experience gaps. Understand that you will be starting at a lower level than you might be currently at as you will lack the experience to move laterally, depending on your current role and company. Volunteer to lead projects outside your comfort zone to show your interest and build experience in the TPM skills needed. Have an honest conversation with your manager or career coach or mentor on  your goals and how to navigate this transition in order to build a plan unique to you.

More than qualifications, you need to demonstrate experience of the different skills expected of a TPM, alongside excellent communication and ability to stay calm under pressure. Technical project managers are naturally organized, always on time with their own deliverables/status updates, communicate concisely and clearly, are able to build relationships across cross-functional teams, take initiative, run sprint/roadmap planning, track roadmap progress, define goals, understand and look at metrics often. These traits below usually showcase that you have high potential to be a successful TPM.

Technical

• Systems thinking
• Architecture/system design literacy
• Technical problem solving
• Understanding software/hardware development

Program

• Planning
• Risk management
• Dependency management
• Agile
• Roadmapping
• Metrics

Leadership

• Stakeholder management
• Communication
• Influence without authority
• Conflict resolution
• Executive communication

Start with leading and delivering complex cross-functional programs in your company. Use a lot of metrics as TPMs deliver on both operational and business metrics. You should have at least 2-3 programs you have led that went beyond your current role to expand either into solid program management skills or in-depth technical skills. There are tons of free resources you can tap into such as looking at LinkedIn profiles of TPMs to get ideas. These are directional as most folks do not publish their resume online.

Use keywords to match the job description exactly, swap them in your resume as needed. Do not keyword stuff. Instead focus on the major skills, technologies listed in the job posting and match to that. Irrespective, your resume needs to have solid metrics and data to support your program management skills.

When the job market is tough and jobs are competitive,definitely use a referral. In general, always use a referral. However, if you are waiting more than 24 hours for a referral, apply directly as you usually need to apply within the first 12 hours of posting as there will be 1000s of applicants for every role otherwise. You will need to identify and reach out to the folks who will be your referral early and have all the details they will need ready to send to them along with the job posting you want them to refer you to. Do the ground work, do not ask them to find jobs matching your resume or to extract information from the resume to fill in the referral. 

Take a look at the TPM blog post which cover this extensively. The Ace the TPM Interview course also covers interview questions and showcases what data points you need to have in your answers to raise the bar.

Most TPM interview will involve system design. Some might ask for a panel presentation which will usually require you to have one slide that covers the system architecture. The AcetheTPM interview course has multiple modules covering the different concepts you need to know for system design and how to approach the system design interview component.

Use the TPM101 course even if you are a TPM as there is a wide array of skills that you need to highlight. The course also helps you understand levels so that you can map to the correct level when applying as levels.fyi is not well calibrated when your total compensation includes stock.

Use the free content in mariogerard.com to learn the different skills of a TPM and use AcetheTPM interview to strengthen your system design concepts and do a full e2e interview prep.

As you likely have the technical depth necessary, focus on cross functional program management skills, communication with executives, communication with non technical leaders, assessing, mitigating technical and non technical risks for the project, keeping track of milestones and velocity, running sprints across one or more teams, coordinating and making critical program impacting decisions across multiple teams, tracking metrics and goals.You will need to step outside and volunteer to do some of this outside your current role and shows track record of delivery and ability to quickly learn. A single program, unless very complex and large will likely not suffice as it needs to be repeatable sustainable performance. Work with your manager to get these opportunities in your current company.

As you likely have the program management skills necessary, focus more on building system design understanding and technical depth. Additionally, make sure you are leading cross functional programs across multiple technical and non technical teams, ensure you have communication with executives, communication with non technical leaders, you need to start assessing technical risks for the project and being able to deep dive them. Understand the engineering team estimates, challenge them when needed, understand how they track their milestones and velocity, sit in on design reviews, sprint planning, read the design docs and understand any operational load. This might be outside your current role, so work with your manager to get these opportunities in your current company.