Senior Technical Program Manager

Kiavi, formerly known as LendingHome, is one of the largest lenders to real estate investors in the United States. With Kiavi’s technology platform and innovative financing solutions, real estate investors are empowered to make informed decisions, close deals faster, and realize the full potential of their real estate investment strategies.

Founded in 2013, Kiavi is committed to helping customers revitalize approximately $25 trillion worth of aged U.S. housing stock and provide move-in ready homes and rental housing for millions of Americans across the country.  We have funded almost $13 billion dollars worth of loans across about 52,000+ projects, becoming one of the nation's largest bridge loan lenders. 

Combining our technology and industry expertise, Kiavi has grown to a team of over 400 and has won many awards over the years including Forbes Fintech 50, Finovate Awards: Best Digital Mortgage Platform, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, and many more. 

• Loans Funded: $12.3+ billion in loans funded 
• Homes financed: 52,000+ projects funded for our customers across the country. 95% of projects have successful exits
• Geography: 31 states + D.C. where we lend to real estate investors so they can revitalize neighborhoods 
• Employees: Over 400 employees

This position can be based remotely in any of our approved hiring regions. Our hybrid distributed workforce philosophy allows us to find the best talent in the country and build diverse teams, while allowing our colleagues to work from the location that works best for them. For those who prefer to work in-office, we have locations in San Francisco and Pittsburgh. We also plan to use these spaces to bring together teammates to drive creativity and innovation.

The Role

As a Senior Technical Program Manager, you play a critical role in executing fast-paced and high-impact org-wide initiatives and continuously improving processes to increase the effectiveness of our products, operations, and engineering organizations. You will partner with key stakeholders such as product and engineering leads to establish roadmaps, create and track success metrics, and lead planning efforts. You’ll also work across several development teams on some of the most complex and most critical projects at the company to help move our strategy forward. To do this, you’ll gather requirements, identify and manage risks, schedules and dependencies, and communicate clearly with project stakeholders.

Kiavi is reimagining the full lifecycle of a real estate investor (REI) from the ground up with data at the core of everything we do. This includes enabling the REI to make data driven decisions regarding their next project: determining the type and scope of project, sourcing a property, financing it and more. Building towards this vision requires close and frequent cross-team/cross-functional effort. For example, you will work closely with product managers, data scientists, engineers (data infra, ML Ops, applications) to launch cutting-edge machine learning models into production that solve true business problems for our customers at scale.

We are looking for someone who is highly ambitious, able to organize both ideas and people, and excel at problem-solving of all kinds. You have a bias towards action and are able to break down complex problems into steps that drive rapid product development and delivery of results.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and execute new horizontal processes across engineering teams, to bring accountability and efficiency to our joint planning
• Manage the priorities of multiple development teams, ensuring alignment and streamlined execution of multiple concurrent projects
• Partner with relevant partners to develop program milestones, track progress, handle cross-team dependencies, mitigate risks and run cross-team communications
• Proactively remove obstacles to drive momentum and progress. Identify communication gaps, lead issue resolutions and provide support to teams balancing contending priorities. Get results proactively
• Continuously improve and scale the organization. Implement data-driven improvements to the engineering organization and the program management process
• Share program/project process frameworks, tools, and standard methodologies that can be adopted throughout the organization. Improve product development and on-time delivery
• Develop and manage program and project plans in collaboration with Product, Engineering, Marketing, Design, Operations, Data Science, Legal, etc. from scoping through implementation (including roadmaps, milestones and success criteria, resource planning and tracking project schedule)
• Communicate progress clearly to key stakeholders. Communicate schedules, priorities, and status to all levels in the company
• Move quickly to drive both existing and greenfield projects forward, while always keeping our end users and business impact in mind
• Engage closely with the engineering team to help determine the best technical implementation methods as well as a reasonable implementation schedule. Understand the needs of dependent engineering teams and define requirements as necessary
  

Qualifications

• Minimum requirements:
• Six years of technical program management experience
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics, related quantitative subject area, or equivalent practical experience
• In depth knowledge of agile development practices and tools such as Jira Reports,, monte carlo planning, etc
• Solid technical capability and ability to understand technical designs, challenges, and risks
• Experience in leading projects that span multiple engineering teams with end to end ownership and knowledge of technical program management tools
• Experience managing projects across functional teams, building sustainable processes and coordinating release schedules
• Ability to manage multiple parallel projects and delivering quality releases on schedule
• Experience with the entire software development lifecycle from inception to testing to production deployment and maintenance
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical individuals
• Strong written, spoken communication, negotiation and leadership skills
• Able to handle ambiguity - you can figure out what needs to be done and then do it
• Preferred qualifications:
• Experience at a growth-stage company or tech company
• Excellent in identifying process gaps, measuring progress, and balancing engineering and product efficiency with process overhead
• Ability to influence, empower, and align people across a broad variety of job functions through your relationships
• Ability to break down a product or feature into the technical teams and systems involved and their dependencies
• Ability to discern short term vs long term roadmaps and the conflict/impact of each, without losing sight of the highest priority items
• Ability to be an influential member of a highly integrated team composed of both technical and non-technical members
• Ability to exercise technical judgment in solving software engineering challenges involving bug triage, source control, continuous integration, etc.
• Knowledge of data science, machine learning, ML Ops and data infrastructure - experience with relevant projects even better
• Equipped with the intelligence, empathy, integrity and technical chops required to quickly earn the trust of a strong technical team
• Knowledge of tools such as Jira, GSuite, Miro, etc.

Kiavi takes a market-based approach to pay, and pay may vary depending on your location. The expected annualized base pay range for this full-time role to be performed remotely is $150,800 - $206,000 + equity + benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Your recruiter can share more about the specific base pay range for your preferred location during the hiring process. Please note that the pay range listed above reflects the base salary only, and does not include the target value of equity, or benefits.

We are not approved to hire in the following regions: Arkansas, California, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey or Oklahoma. As well as: NYC Metro Area, Seattle Metro, Washington DC Metro, Baltimore Metro, Boston Metro, Chicago Metro, Houston Metro, Denver Metro, Portland Metro. 

Benefits and Perks 

• Product Ownership: All employees think like an owner because all new hires are granted stock options. After meeting a service requirement at Kiavi, we offer an extension to exercise options up to 3 years after termination.
• Health Insurance: Our medical, dental, and vision plans are completely free for employee-only coverage, and the company pays 80% of the total premium for dependents.
• Whole-Person Wellness: Anyone can schedule no-cost unlimited virtual therapy sessions, use a monthly subsidy for fitness facilities, and access reimbursements for fertility services.
• Carrot: The leading global fertility benefits provider, built to support employees through their lifelong fertility healthcare journey.
• Retirement Savings. Employees who participate in our “no fee” 401(k) receive an immediately-vested employer match on 100% of contributions up to 3% of compensation. 
• Career Growth: We foster an environment that encourages opportunities to use your voice, do better for our customers and each other, and support your career journey.
• Flexible Time Off: With no cap on the number of days of PTO each year, employees are encouraged to enjoy a well-rounded lifestyle with work, travel, and family.
• Paid Leaves: You’re immediately eligible for up to 12 weeks of paid leave each year to bond with a new child (mothers & fathers) and up to 8 weeks for medical or caregiver leave so you come back ready to deliver high-impact results.
• Remote-First: We win together while still being fully remote, and each employee receives a stipend for their home office setup and a monthly allowance to help with the cost of internet/phone.

Kiavi in the News:

•  Comment start HousingWire: 2023 HW Tech100 Winner: Kiavi 
• PropTech Connect: Kiavi Closes $209M To Grow Its Funding Capacity 
• CrowdFund Insider: Kiavi Closes $158M Revolving Securitization of Residential Transition Loans 
• Mortgage Professional America: Real investors’ lender Kiavi achieves milestone  
• Inc Magazine: 2022 Best Places to Work: Kiavi