Principal Technical Program Manager

At the heart of Booking's Central Technology department, the Tech Standards organization thrives on collaboration. Our goal is to work hand in hand across the business, establishing standards for robust technical, data, and engineering practices. This collaborative effort enables us to develop new capabilities and modernize our existing technology, all in pursuit of our Connected Trip vision - to empower people to explore the world through all the services provided on Booking's platform such as Accommodation, Flights, Transportation and Attractions.

We will create cross-business unit architectural standards and reusable artifacts, developing a high-level architecture blueprint that provides an overview of the system's structure and its main components. Most importantly, Tech Standards will establish a tech radar and actively promote the understanding and adoption of architectural principles and best practices within Booking.com, empowering everybody to excel in their roles.

Role purpose and scope

The Principal Technical Program Manager is a bar-raising execution leader who orchestrates multi-year, cross-organization initiatives that span multiple domains, roadmaps, and leadership groups. They operate at systems and portfolio level to turn strategy into business outcomes, building the delivery frameworks, governance, and alignment mechanisms that scale across orgs. They are a trusted advisor to executive leaders, and a force multiplier for TPM craft maturity.

As a Principal Technical Program Manager for the Booking Holdings Financial Systems (BHFS) Enablement Pillar, you will co-own the strategic direction and end-to-end delivery structure of the foundational service management and control capabilities that enable Booking Holdings Financial Services to operate regulated payment and e-money services safely and reliably.

You will help define the target state for the BHFS Enablement Pillar, and design and run the governance, cadences, and reporting that connect sub-initiatives across service management, incident and change management, data and asset management, security, operational resilience, and business continuity into one coherent program narrative that leaders can use to make decisions.

Partnering closely with BHFS, FinTech, Central Tech, Finance, Risk & Compliance and other stakeholders, you will align priorities, surface and manage dependencies, and ensure delivery teams execute predictably against regulatory timelines and go-live milestones.

• Strategic clarity: a well-understood vision, target state, and narrative that leaders use to make consistent prioritization and investment decisions.
• Own strategy-to-execution at portfolio scale: co-create BHFS Enablement strategy and target state with BHFS, FinTech, and Central Tech leaders, and translate it into coherent multi-year program roadmaps, success metrics, and decision frameworks; connect objectives and key results (OKRs) to milestones and measurable outcomes.
• Architect the operating model for delivery: establish governance, cadences, and escalation paths; design dependency and risk systems; enable transparent, data-driven progress reporting, forecast predictability, and decision velocity.
• Reduce ambiguity and align leaders: drive clarity in problem framing, target states, and transitory architectures; facilitate trade-offs across Directors/VPs and negotiate resource pivots to protect critical paths.
• Uplevel how work gets done: define and institutionalize repeatable playbooks for planning, risk and control, change management, and cross-org communications; set quality bars for end-to-end "done right" execution.
• Raise the technical bar: partner with architects, product, data, security, and reliability leaders to ensure the right technical decisions, standards, NFRs, and maturity checkpoints are built in from the start.
• Scale impact through others: mentor Senior TPMs and program leads, lead communities of practice, and create reusable assets (frameworks, templates, dashboards) that elevate delivery maturity across the company.

• Extensive experience operating at principal level shaping and driving large-scale, multi-org technical programs in complex environments, with clear evidence of both strategy definition and execution leading to durable business outcomes.
• Systems thinking and technical depth across modern software delivery (cloud, service-oriented architectures, data platforms, reliability, security-by-design), with the ability to navigate architectural trade-offs and NFRs.
• Executive influence and communication: crisp narrative-building, decision-oriented storytelling, and the ability to align diverse leaders on scope, priority, and risk posture.
• Governance, risk and control literacy: comfort working with compliance, privacy, security, finance, and audit partners to build controls into delivery without slowing teams down.
• Change leadership: proven ability to shift behaviors and ways of working across multiple orgs, with measurable adoption and sustained performance improvements.
• Force multiplier mindset: a track record of mentoring senior practitioners and institutionalizing repeatable mechanisms that outlast the program.

• Delivery against strategic outcomes and OKRs, not just timelines.
• Decision velocity and quality at governance forums; reduced escalations and clearer trade-offs.
• Predictability and flow: improved lead times, fewer rework loops, and reliability of milestone forecasts.
• Risk posture: earlier risk discovery and mitigations; fewer critical path surprises.
• Adoption and behavior change: demonstrable uptake of standards, playbooks, and delivery mechanisms across orgs.
• Craft scaling: growth of TPM capability via mentorship, frameworks, and communities of practice.

• Define and run a scalable governance model with clear decision rights, RACI patterns, and integrated cadences (planning, SoS, reviews, SteerCos).
• Establish transparent program telemetry (goals, measures, leading indicators, confidence, and risk heatmaps) that inform decisions and enable course correction.
• Partner deeply with Engineering, Product, Data, Security, Finance, and Ops to ensure design integrity, risk readiness, and operational excellence.

• Possibility to live and work in Amsterdam, named as the best city in the World for living a happy and healthy life
• International and diverse company culture;
• Possibility to innovate through multiple company programs (e.g. Hackathon, twice a year)
• Opportunity to work in an Agile, startup-like development environment
• Excellent support for personal development through online platforms
• Mentorship programs to accelerate skills growth
• Contribute to the company tech transformational journey toward a more modern tech stack
• Inclusive leadership, valuing the opinion of everyone independently of their career level
• Great compensation package
• Multiple perks that will make your life easier (e.g. discounts to local shops, discounted gym membership, etc.)