Senior Technical Program Manager ( Data Platforms & Operations

Overview

Play Station isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. We’re recognized as a global leader in entertainment with the Play Station family of products and services including Play Station®5, Play Station®4, Play Station®VR, Play Station®Plus, and acclaimed Play Station software titles from Play Station Studios. We strive to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity.

We welcome everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team. The Play Station brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.

The Senior Technical Program Manager for Data Platforms & Operations will drive the planning, coordination, and delivery of complex initiatives across our cloud-based data platforms and their operations. In this role the successful candidate will work closely with engineering managers, SRE/operations teams, and data/AI engineering teams who own the data products and data services which rely on the efficient running and delivery of data platforms.

Your role is to:

• Coordinate cross-team work so platform and operational changes land predictably and safely.
• Structure delivery (roadmaps, plans, dependencies, risks) for data platform programs.
• Improve operational performance by assisting engineering managers, ensuring metrics and runbooks are part of the delivery process.
• Provide transparency to leadership via clear, metric-led reporting on status, risk, and outcomes.

This is a senior individual contributor role suited to someone who is highly organised, data-driven, and comfortable working with technical stakeholders across a varied data ecosystem.

• Program & Delivery Management
  • Plan and run cross-platform programs for data platform and operational initiatives (e.g. major upgrades, reliability improvements, cost optimisation, new platform capabilities).
  • Build and maintain integrated program plans (scope, milestones, dependencies, risks, decision points) across multiple engineering and operations teams.
  • Facilitate regular delivery cadences (stand-ups, status reviews) with engineering managers and leads; ensure actions are owned and tracked to completion.
  • Ensure that program objectives are clearly defined, measurable, and aligned with business outcomes, such as:
    • Improved platform availability and reliability.
    • Reduced incident frequency and MTTR targets.
    • Improved data freshness, latency, and throughput for key workloads.
• Operational Coordination & Readiness
  • Partner with engineering managers, SREs, and operations teams to assist them in coordinating operational activities delivered by data platform teams.
  • Change calendars, release planning, and operational readiness reviews.
  • Operational playbooks and runbook readiness for new features or platform changes.
  • Coordinated communication during planned maintenance and impactful changes.
  • Align with service owners (engineering managers) on operational priorities and schedules, helping sequence work in a way that balances reliability, feature delivery, and cost.
• Measurement, Metrics & Reporting
  • Work with engineering managers and service owners to ensure platform and operational KPIs are part of the end delivery:
    • SLA/SLO/SLI for data platforms and pipelines (e.g. uptime, data freshness, query performance).
    • Operational metrics such as incident rate, MTTR, change success rate, and capacity utilisation.
  • Ensure consistent measurement and reporting of delivery metrics across programs and operational areas:
    • Curate and maintain dashboards and status reports for leadership.
    • Highlight trends, risks, and trade-offs in a clear and concise way.
  • Use analytics to prioritise improvements, identify systemic issues, and quantify impact of program work.
• Cross-Team Alignment & Communication
  • Facilitate coordination across:
    • Data platform engineering (cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, data platform services).
    • Data engineering and ETL/ELT teams.
    • AI/ML engineering teams consuming data platform capabilities.
    • Operations, SRE, and service desk teams.
  • Align teams on priorities, sequencing, and…