Technical Program Manager - IT Services

Technical Program Manager - IT Services

• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)

About Us: At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

About the team: Booking.com IT Services size and technical complexity require specialists who can drive cross-organisational initiatives with significant technology dependencies. As a Technical Program Manager, you will lead delivery from problem framing through implementation and measurable outcome. You will work directly with engineering, product and operational stakeholders to establish scope, ownership, realistic plans, delivery rhythms and decision-making. You will bring an independent view of progress, surface risk early and help teams make practical trade-offs without adding unnecessary process.

This is an individual-contributor role. It does not include people management. The role may support global services and stakeholders, but its organisational delivery scope is calibrated to TPM rather than Senior TPM.

About the role: You will independently lead the delivery of technically complex, cross-team initiatives that solve business and internal-customer problems. Working across several engineering and product teams, typically within one track or product group, you will translate an end-to-end technical solution into a realistic program structure, align priorities and ownership, and deliver incremental, measurable value for Booking.com employees and internal customers.

Who you work with

Internal stakeholders

You will work continuously with engineering, product, operations, security, privacy and business teams across Booking.com and relevant Booking Holdings functions. The role requires cooperation, persuasion and clear information-sharing to align priorities and deliver outcomes.

External stakeholders

You may work frequently with technology and service vendors, using clear requirements, delivery plans, risk ownership and performance expectations to support program outcomes.

Role accountability

This is an individual-contributor role with no direct people-management or P&L responsibility. Programs may support globally distributed teams and services, while the organisational delivery scope remains aligned with a TPM role: normally several teams within a track or product group. Decisions and outcomes typically influence the short-to-mid-term delivery horizon.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

• Lead small-to-medium, technically complex programs and cross-team initiatives with meaningful business or internal-customer impact, normally spanning several teams within a track or product group.
• Translate business and internal-customer problems, technical designs and non-functional requirements into a clear delivery structure, milestones and iterative value slices.
• Create and maintain realistic, outcome-based plans using relevant delivery and operational metrics.
• Clarify decision rights, ownership and accountability across workstreams; make dependencies and the critical path visible.
• Identify and manage technical and delivery risks, issues and changes; define mitigation plans (after discussing options with the right owners)
• Build alignment across engineering, product, security, privacy, operations and business stakeholders, influencing without formal authority.
• Communicate concise program updates and decisions at the right level of detail, including to Director-level stakeholders.
• Establish fit-for-purpose governance and delivery practices that work across teams with different ways of working.
• Use retrospectives, delivery data and feedback to improve predictability, quality and team collaboration.
• Contribute practical learning and reusable delivery practices to the TPM craft community.
• Define and maintain program documentation, ensure functional and non-functional requirements are captured, and partner with engineering teams so supporting technical documentation is produced and maintained.
• Drive the planning, documentation and communication of strategic programs with leaders across Booking.com and, where relevant, Booking Holdings.

What success looks like

• Teams understand the outcome, their ownership and how their work connects to the end-to-end solution.
• Plans are credible, continuously updated and focused on incremental value rather than activity alone.
• Risks, dependencies and priority conflicts are visible early and have clear owners and decisions.
• Stakeholders receive concise, evidence-based information and can make timely trade-offs.
• Programs deliver measurable business, employee, reliability, security, cost or operational outcomes.
• Delivery practices become simpler and more effective without creating unnecessary governance.

Role Qualifications and Requirements

• 5+ years of relevant experience in product, project, program or technical program management, working directly with engineering or software-development teams to build, implement or launch technical solutions.
• Evidence of personally leading an end-to-end technical program lifecycle: discovery, scope, planning, execution, release or implementation, outcome measurement and learning.
• Technical fluency sufficient to understand and explain system components, interfaces, data flows, functional and non-functional requirements, testing or release approaches, failure modes and trade-offs.
• Strong delivery-management capability, including iterative planning, sequencing, dependency management, critical-path awareness, risk and issue management, and useful progress metrics.
• Ability to align stakeholders and influence decisions without authority, including when teams have competing priorities.
• Clear written, verbal and visual communication; able to adapt detail and framing for engineers, managers and Directors.
• A data-informed, customer-oriented and pragmatic approach to navigating ambiguity, solving problems and making decisions.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong business awareness and technical vision.
• Curiosity and ability to understand architectural and technical aspects of programs and their long-term consequences.
• Expertise of different delivery methodologies (such as Agile and Lean)

Preferred context

• Cloud infrastructure, SaaS business applications or DevOps practices.
• Identity and access management, including platforms such as Okta, Microsoft Entra ID or Ping Identity; networking, remote access or internal-platform services.
• Programs serving internal customers, including work with vendors or distributed teams.
• Programming or engineering background; business-continuity, regulatory or compliance exposure.
• Jira, Jira Align or comparable planning and delivery tooling.

AI affinity and mindset

• Show curiosity and practical understanding of AI tools and how they can improve work, not just generic enthusiasm.
• Demonstrate safe AI habits: awareness of hallucinations, privacy, data handling, corporate guardrails, and the need to validate outputs.
• Identify relevant AI use cases for AV/VC operations, such as incident summarisation, log analysis, monitoring insights, knowledge discovery, vendor documentation analysis, meeting room issue triage, runbook generation, and support workflow automation.
• Be able to set context-rich prompts, refine outputs, and validate AI-generated work before using it in operational or stakeholder-facing decisions.
• Actively encourage responsible AI adoption in the team, while avoiding overclaiming what AI can do or replacing human judgment with unchecked AI output.

Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance:

Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, as well unique-to-Booking.com benefits which include:

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
• Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit
• Living and working in Amsterdam, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe
• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
• Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
• Opportunity to utilize technical expertise, leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit
• Promote and drive impactful and innovative engineering solutions
• Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
• Competitive compensation and benefits package and some great added perks of working in the home city of Booking.com

• This role does not come with relocation assistance.

Pre-Employment Screening

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.