Principal Services Program Manager

Principal Services Program Manager

At UKG, the work you do matters. The code you ship, the decisions you make, and the care you show a customer all add up to real impact. Today, tens of millions of workers start and end their days with our workforce operating platform. Helping people get paid, grow in their careers, and shape the future of their industries. That's what we do.

We never stop learning. We never stop challenging the norm. We push for better, and we celebrate the wins along the way. Here, you'll get flexibility that's real, benefits you can count on, and a team that succeeds together. Because at UKG, your work matters-and so do you.

UKG's Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) practice is a small, elite team that embeds directly with our most strategic enterprise customers to solve high-value problems at the edge of our platform. We are built on the operating model of the best outcome-delivery organizations in enterprise technology: Palantir's Forward Deployed Engineering practice, McKinsey's client delivery model, and the most disciplined embedded engineering teams in the industry. We deploy in pairs, move fast, and deliver things that work in production. The Principal Services Program Manager is the person who makes the whole model trustworthy at the executive level and scalable as we grow.

As a Principal Services Program Manager in FDE, you operate across multiple concurrent engagements, own the executive customer relationship on the most complex accounts, and shape the way the PM practice works as the team scales. You are not executing a playbook – you are writing it. You partner with the FDE Practice Lead on deal structure and pipeline qualification. You are in the room when SOWs are being shaped, not just when they are being delivered. You mentor and develop Lead PMs, maintain outcome discipline across the portfolio, and serve as the escalation owner when something in the customer relationship needs a senior hand. The closest analogs are the McKinsey Senior Engagement Manager and the Palantir Senior Deployment Strategist: someone whose judgment on scope, risk, and customer relationship does not require review, and whose executive presence creates the conditions for expansion that engineering quality alone cannot.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Own the Portfolio
• Lead Executive Customer Relationships
• Shape Deals and Engagements
• Build the PM Practice

Basic Qualifications:

• 8+ years experience with customer-facing program management in forward deployed or embedded services model
• Demonstrated experience managing CXO-level customer relationships in high-stakes, complex enterprise environments
• Track record of running multiple simultaneous complex programs without loss of quality or customer confidence

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong commercial instincts: ability to read deal health, scope risk, and expansion opportunity in real time
• Experience shaping engagement structures and SOW language, not just executing against them
• Ability to operate in high-ambiguity environments with limited oversight; your judgment does not require escalation for routine complexity
• Experience building or significantly improving a PM operating model, delivery framework, or practice playbook

UKG is the Workforce Operating Platform that puts workforce understanding to work. With the world's largest collection of workforce insights, and people-first AI, our ability to reveal unseen ways to build trust, amplify productivity, and empower talent, is unmatched. It's this expertise that equips our customers with the intelligence to solve any challenge in any industry – because great organizations know their workforce is their competitive edge.

UKG is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, disability, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, and other legally protected categories.