---
title: 'Technical Program Manager at BackOps-AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-backops-ai-san-francisco-5t082nnrpj11'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Technical Program Manager at BackOps-AI

- **Company:** BackOps-AI
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-01
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/backops-ai/am9icG9zdDp4MIzQZenGzeOFBx61QBst

## Job description

## About BackOps

BackOps AI transforms supply-chain operations with agentic AI that automates complex workflows, freeing teams to focus on what matters most. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, we foster a culture of innovation, ownership, and measurable impact.

## The Role

Engineering is at the size where the hardest problems stop being technical and start being cross-cutting. Work arrives from everywhere. Dependencies between teams get discovered late. Decisions that touch three teams wait on one person's calendar.

You would be our first Technical Program Manager, and you would own that layer. Not by adding process, but by building the smallest set of mechanisms that make the org self-coordinating, and then getting out of the way. This role reports to the VP of Engineering with direct exposure to the CTO and the Head of Product. You will not be assembling status reports for a hierarchy. You will be deciding which programs exist and making them land.

## Your Impact

- Own the operating system this organization runs on: the planning cadence, how work arrives, and how it gets prioritized. Programs are the output. The system is the job.
- Set the program agenda with the VP of Engineering. Decide which programs exist and which do not.
- Own our top strategic programs end to end, from framing the problem through to the thing being live and working.
- Build the dependency and risk picture across engineering, product, and customer delivery, and surface problems early enough that they are still cheap to fix.
- Fix how work arrives. Reducing unplanned work is one of the highest-leverage things anyone can do here.
- Own the operational programs that cross every team: incident and escalation design, cloud cost, and how we adopt AI tooling internally.
- Define the metrics that show whether a program is working, and give leadership a trustworthy read on delivery risk without anyone having to chase it.
- Grow other program managers as the function scales.

## What We're Looking For

- 10+ years in technical program management, engineering, or a blend, including time at a startup where the process did not exist yet and you built it.
- You have owned an operating system, not just programs. Planning, intake, and prioritization as a system that keeps working after you stop pushing on it.
- Technical credibility with senior engineers and architects. You can hold architecture and delivery risk in the same conversation, read a design doc, ask the question that changes the design, and push back on an estimate with reasons. You do not need to write production code. You do need engineers to want you in the room.
- A track record of landing an organization's most important programs across teams that do not report to you.
- Experience growing other program managers, and shaping how an engineering organization works rather than only working inside it.
- Clear, compressed written communication. You can put a complicated delivery risk in front of an executive in a paragraph and have them make the right call.
- Comfort with genuine ambiguity. Several of the programs above do not exist yet and are yours to define.

## Nice to Have

- AI/ML or agentic systems experience, especially the reliability and evaluation problems that come with non-deterministic software.
- You have built a planning or intake system from scratch and seen it survive a year.
- Enterprise or regulated-customer delivery experience.
- Incident and escalation program design.

What Success Looks Like

- Every cross-team initiative has an owner, a definition of done, and a status you can trust.
- Intake has a front door, and unplanned work is measured weekly rather than estimated once a year.
- The org plans and re-plans without it being an event.
- Escalation paths are designed, written down, and used in a real incident.
- Systemic problems get fixed once rather than escalated repeatedly.
- Leadership makes decisions on current information without anyone assembling it by hand.

## Why BackOps

- A function to define rather than inherit, with the mandate and the executive backing to do it.
- Real scope: you will shape how a fast-growing engineering organization operates.
- Small team with real autonomy and direct access to founders and customers.
- Backed by exceptional investors and advisors.

Rewards

- Competitive salary and meaningful equity.
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage.
- 401(k) plan, disability insurance, and life insurance.
- Flexible time off.
- Daily meals in the office, and regular team events and offsites.

## About BackOps-AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: BackOps builds an AI-native operating system for supply chain and logistics operations, turning complex manual workflows into structured, always-on execution across systems and teams.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Sean McCarthy (CEO) and Henry Ou (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Supply Chain & Logistics Technology / AI Operations
- **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise (automotive manufacturers, global retailers, grocery chains, machinery suppliers, and other logistics-heavy industries)
- **Mission statement**: To build the AI-native operating layer for modern operations, turning complex, manual workflows into structured, always-on execution across systems and teams.

## Products & Services
- **AI Process Center**: Captures institutional knowledge by recording how employees complete logistics workflows, identifies inefficiencies, and converts those processes into automated actions. Includes a Workflow Recorder and historical ticket mining.
- **Relay**: An agentic automation engine that runs continuously across communication channels (email, Slack, portals, etc.) to detect issues and resolve them automatically. Capabilities include order management, claims & disputes, shipping & logistics tracking, accounts payable, data & document processing, and customer support triage.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $34M raised
- **Last Round**: $26M Series A (led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Gradient, Construct Capital, and 10VC) — raised in April 2026
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Theory Ventures, Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund), Construct Capital, 10VC
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Raised $26M Series A just 6 months ago (as of Sept 2026)
  - Customers report 93% faster response times and 100% automatic filing of eligible carrier claims
  - Clients include one of the world's largest automobile manufacturers, a major global retailer, leading grocery chains, and major U.S. machinery suppliers
  - Headcount of 25 employees, actively scaling team

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-native architecture**: Not a chatbot bolted onto existing workflows, but a purpose-built "operations OS" that learns processes from SOPs and executes across fragmented systems (web portals, carrier APIs, ERPs, email, Slack)
- **Forward-deployed team model**: Works alongside customer operations from day one, mapping processes and tuning decision logic — a hands-on approach that reduces implementation friction
- **Founding team depth**: CEO Sean McCarthy was an early hire at Amazon Shipping (global sales); CTO Henry Ou led applied ML teams at Apple and ByteDance and ran an ERP integration business — a rare blend of operational and technical expertise
- **Full lineage capture**: All decisions and exceptions are logged with complete context, creating a living system of record for how teams actually work

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the team and accelerating product roadmap to meet growing demand for AI-driven logistics automation
- Expanding the platform's ability to handle more complex, multi-departmental workflows (CS, Ops, Finance, Sales)
- Deepening integrations with legacy systems, carrier portals, and enterprise tools

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Emphasizes a "human + machine" philosophy — building tools that augment operators, not replace them. Described as a place for "operators, engineers, or builders who believe that the future of work is human + machine and not human versus machine."
- **Remote/Hybrid**: Based in San Francisco with two offices; specific remote policy not detailed publicly, but likely hybrid given the forward-deployed team model.
- **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work on a category-defining product in a space ripe for transformation. Small, nimble team (~25 employees) means high impact and ownership. Backed by top-tier investors with deep AI and logistics expertise.
- **Engineering culture**: CTO with strong ML background from Apple and ByteDance suggests a high bar for technical excellence. Work involves cutting-edge AI applied to real-world operational problems.

## Sources
1. [backops.ai](https://www.backops.ai/) — Official product and company description
2. [backops.ai/careers](https://www.backops.ai/careers) — Careers page and mission
3. [backops.ai/about-us](https://www.backops.ai/about-us) — Founding story and team
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/backops-ai) — Company profile with headcount and founding year
5. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/backops-ai) — Funding data, news, and Expert Collections

## Other roles at BackOps-AI

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- [Founding GTM Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-gtm-recruiter-backops-ai-san-francisco-trwn25fwpbnn) — San Francisco, CA
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