Technical Program Manager, Customer Experience
Pleo · Lisbon, Lisbon
ABOUT PLEO
Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’.
The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years.
Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We're looking for a Technical Program Manager, Customer Experience at Pleo. In this role, you'll help lead complex technical programs at the intersection of Customer Experience, Customer Success, Support, Onboarding, Product, Engineering, Data, Revenue Operations and AI. You’ll help turn Pleo’s CX transformation strategy into scalable technical capabilities that make it easier for customers to onboard, get support, realise value, resolve issues and grow with Pleo.
This is not a traditional project-management role focused on timelines, meetings and status updates. You’ll understand the customer and business problem, get into the technical details, translate requirements between CX and Engineering, challenge proposed solutions, manage technical dependencies, and drive programs from concept through implementation, adoption and measurable impact.
WHO YOU’LL BE WORKING WITH AND REPORTING TO
You’ll report to our Director, CX and work closely with teams in Customer Success, Support, Onboarding, Digital Content and Self-Service, Voice of the Customer, and Revenue Operations. Our team is highly collaborative and dedicated to acting as a technical bridge between CX and Pleo’s Product, Engineering, Data and systems organisations. You’ll also have the chance to partner with teams across Product, Engineering, Data and Analytics, Finance, Risk and Fraud, and Business Systems to ensure success and keep technical decisions tied to customer outcomes and business value.
WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING
As a Technical Program Manager, you will:
- Lead CX technology programs end-to-end, from problem definition and requirements through design, testing, launch, adoption and optimisation. Own scope, milestones, dependencies, risks and decisions, and confirm after launch that the technology changed adoption, customer impact and operations.
- Partner with CX leadership to define the technical roadmap for the customer experience transformation, and help establish the future-state CX technology architecture for Pleo’s next stage of growth.
- Translate customer and business problems into clear technical requirements and acceptance criteria for Product, Engineering, Data and systems teams, and explain architecture, trade-offs, risks and options to CX leaders in business language.
- Drive integration programs connecting CRM, Customer Success, Support, Onboarding, Product, billing, analytics and AI platforms. Document customer data flows: where data originates, where it moves, which system owns it and how it is used.
- Support a single customer view and improve customer health and risk infrastructure, combining usage, support, onboarding, payment, engagement and sentiment signals. Partner with Data on churn prediction, proactive risk detection and next-best-action.
- Drive AI-enabled CX programs for self-service, agent productivity, onboarding, Customer Success, knowledge retrieval, QA and virtual customer-facing capabilities. Set scope, release criteria and quality gates for the engineers and data scientists building AI agents, without line management of those teams.
- Automate repetitive CX workflows and reduce technical debt across customer-facing systems. Challenge automation that is covering up a broken process.
- Lead technical programs with Support (routing, case management, escalations), Customer Success (health, lifecycle triggers, forecasting) and Onboarding (digital journeys, implementation tracking, time-to-value).
- Own UAT coordination, business readiness and technical program governance for major CX releases, including decision logs, dependency and risk tracking, and architecture decisions. Escalate risks with recommendations, not just status.
- Make sure CX signals reach Product, so recurring friction and customer needs become visible and actionable.
WHAT YOU BRING
You’ll thrive in this role if you have:
- 5+ years of Technical Program Management, leading complex technology programs.
- Experience in SaaS, fintech, enterprise technology or another high-growth digital environment.
- Experience managing programs across multiple systems, integrations, APIs, data flows and technical dependencies, where no single team owns the whole solution.
- A solid grasp of the software development lifecycle, from requirements and architecture through testing, release and optimisation, in Agile or hybrid environments.
- Program fundamentals: requirements, scope, roadmap, dependency and risk management, technical governance, stakeholder management, UAT, release and change management, and adoption measurement.
- Strong analytical skills and comfort with operational and customer data.
- Clear written and verbal communication. You can state the problem, recommendation, trade-offs and decision needed concisely, and translate technical decisions into language senior stakeholders understand.
- Influence without direct authority, and the confidence to challenge both business and technical assumptions.
- The ability to run several high-priority programs at once, while keeping the broader CX strategy in view.
- Hands-on experience taking AI-enabled features into production and owning their quality after launch, including accuracy, resolution rates, and knowing when a human should take over.
- A track record of moving complex programs from idea to measurable results.
Nice to have:
- Direct Customer Experience or Revenue Operations experience
- Gainsight or similar CS platforms, Zendesk or similar support platforms, Salesforce or another enterprise CRM
- Building customer health or churn-prediction models, or working with product usage and behavioural data
- Administering conversational AI platforms, designing virtual agents, or building agentic workflows
- Automated QA or knowledge-management platforms
- Payments, spend-management or financial-data experience
- SQL or data-querying skills
- Managing global or multi-market customer platforms
WHY IS THIS ROLE A GOOD FIT FOR YOU
This role is a good fit for you if:
- You enjoy solving complex customer problems through technology and can move between CX leaders and Engineering teams.
- You believe technology should improve outcomes rather than just automate processes.
- You want ownership of hard problems rather than coordination work, and you’re comfortable creating structure in ambiguity.
- You want to be a trusted technical partner to CX leadership, Product and Engineering, helping build a connected, AI-enabled CX operating model.
This role is not a good fit for you if:
- You are looking for a traditional project-management role focused on timelines, meetings and status updates.
- You prefer to avoid getting into the technical details, data models, failure scenarios, and build-versus-buy trade-offs.
- You are uncomfortable challenging business or technical assumptions, or you prefer coordinating tasks rather than driving end-to-end accountability and measurable outcomes.
HOW YOU’LL DEVELOP IN THIS ROLE
In your first 12 months at Pleo, you’ll:
- Lead CX initiatives to move from strategy to production faster and more predictably, with Product, Engineering, Data and CX aligned on outcomes and risks surfacing before they block delivery.
- Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Data and CX to better connect customer-facing systems, make churn and health signals actionable, reduce manual work and customer friction, and manage technical debt on purpose.
- Grow your skills as a trusted technical partner to CX leadership, Product and Engineering, helping build a connected, AI-enabled CX operating model and establishing the future-state CX technology architecture for Pleo’s next stage of growth.
THE LOCATION
Please note: We can hire on a hybrid or in-person set-up in any of the locations listed on the advert but you will need to be physically based in the country of your choice with a valid right to work. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role in any of the listed locations.
SHOW ME THE BENEFITS!
- Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!)
- Lunch is on us for your work days - enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office
- Comprehensive private healthcare - depending on your location, coverage options include Vitality, Alan or Médis
- 25 days of annual leave + public holidays (additional days may apply in select countries based on local standards).
- For our Team, we offer both hybrid and fully remote working options
- We use MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and well-being support with great success so far
- Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise your family due to work
THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
We want to ensure you are set-up for success and understand what will be expected of you. If your application is successful, our interview process is as follows:
1. Intro call: A 30-minute chat with our Talent Acquisition Partner to discuss the role and your background.
2. Hiring Manager Interview: A 45 minutes chat with the hiring manager to deep dive into your experience and role
3. Pleo Challenge and Panel Interview: We will send you a take home test and invite you to present it during a 60 mins team interview. This is an opportunity to show us how you would handle the day to day of the role
4. Final Interview: A final interview with a Senior Leader
Transparency is important to us so we also wanted to share some insights about what we’re looking for in applications to ensure you can set yourself up for success!
Last time we hired for this role, we received a vast number of applications but only a few were selected for an intro call. Some of the key reasons why previous candidates didn’t make it past the application screening stage include:
- CV writing and content: we receive a lot of CVs, and many of them are AI-generated. We love seeing people leverage AI—it’s a big focus for us internally too—but without human intervention, these CVs can sometimes become generic and fail to show a candidate in the best light. What we're really looking for is the specific details of real impact that only you know from your previous experience. A top tip from us is to use the “Achieved X, as measured by Y, by doing Z” formula (credit: Laszlo Bock, ~2014) to give a really clear picture of what you’ve worked on. A final note: including links to your previous companies' websites is a huge help and allows us to truly understand your background!
- Application care: every single application we receive is reviewed by a human (yes, hundreds of them) because we believe that candidates' efforts should be matched by an equal level of human care. This means that we expect a similar level of attention put into your application. Read and answer the application questions carefully, they make a huge difference in our decision-making process.
- Profile to role fit: highlight most important aspects of the role, points that might get misunderstood, any specific industry requirements etc.
ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION
- English first. Since it's our company language, please submit your application in English. You’ll be using it a lot if you join us.
- A fair look for everyone. Our talent team reads every single application to ensure the process is fair. To keep things running smoothly, we only accept applications through our system—our support team can’t pass on calls or emails.
- Diversity drives us. We can only reach our goals if our team reflects the world around us. That starts with you hitting apply, even if you don't tick every single box. We encourage people from all backgrounds and experiences to join us.
- Interview at your best. We want you to feel comfortable throughout the process. If you have any accessibility requirements or need a specific format, email belonging@pleo.io. We’ll design a process that works for you.
- Your data is safe. When you apply, we process your personal data as a data processor. For more information on how Pleo processes personal data, read our Privacy Policy here https://www.pleo.io/en/legal.
- Applying for multiple roles? Nothing is stopping you, and we assess every role independently. However, we do look for alignment, so make sure you can explain why your interest and experience are right for each specific role.
- Reapplying. If you’re applying for the same role again, please wait six months from your last decision before hitting submit.