Principal Technical Program Manager - FreeWheel

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, we’re making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. As a global company, we have offices in nine countries and can insert advertisements around the world.

Job Summary

Are you energized by finding hidden opportunities in complex data and turning them into durable improvements across products, platforms, and operations? Join FreeWheel as a Principal Technical Program Manager, Optimization & Intelligence, where you will combine analytical depth, technical judgment, and program leadership to identify, prioritize, and deliver high-impact optimization opportunities. This senior individual contributor will operate as a change agent and trusted partner to Engineering, Product, Commercial, Finance, and Operations leaders. You will use data analytics and intelligence to surface opportunities, shape hypotheses and investment cases, establish measurable outcomes, and mobilize cross-functional teams from ideation through implementation and adoption. The role requires comfort with ambiguity, exceptional communication, expert change management, and the ability to influence complex technical and business decisions without direct authority.

Job Description

Core Responsibilities

• Build and continuously refine an enterprise optimization portfolio by combining quantitative analysis, operational intelligence, stakeholder input, and strategic priorities.

• Identify opportunities to improve platform performance, engineering efficiency, cost, revenue, reliability, customer outcomes, and organizational effectiveness; quantify baselines, value potential, tradeoffs, and implementation complexity.

• Translate ambiguous problems into clear hypotheses, analytical plans, technical program charters, roadmaps, milestones, dependencies, decision points, and success measures.

• Partner closely with Engineering teams to validate opportunities, shape solution approaches, sequence work, manage risks and dependencies and drive execution through measurable outcomes.

• Apply exploratory analysis, experimentation, forecasting, segmentation, anomaly detection, causal reasoning, and other analytical methods to reveal root causes and determine where intervention will create the greatest value.

• Establish trusted baselines, leading and lagging indicators, benefit hypotheses, and measurement frameworks; track realized impact and adjusted programs when results do not meet expectations.

• Develop business cases and executive recommendations that connect technical choices to customer, commercial, financial, and operational outcomes.

• Identify, evaluate, and drive responsible deployment of AI and large language model capabilities that improve workflows, decision support, engineering productivity, customer experiences, or operating leverage.

• Lead rapid pilots and proofs of value, define guardrails and evaluation criteria, and partner with technical owners to advance validated ideas into scalable production capabilities.

• Create clear operating mechanisms—including dashboards, reviews, decision logs, risk registers, and escalation paths—that improve transparency, accountability, and decision speed.

• Partner across Product, Commercial, Finance, Operations, and Engineering to align incentives, resolve tradeoffs, and ensure optimization initiatives address end-to-end business needs.

• Own change-management strategies for major initiatives, including stakeholder analysis, readiness assessment, communications, adoption planning, training, feedback loops, and reinforcement.

• Communicate complex analyses, technical constraints, choices, progress, and outcomes through concise narratives tailored to executive, commercial, product, and engineering audiences.

• Act as an enterprise change agent: challenge assumptions constructively, create momentum for new approaches, mentor others in structured problem solving, and exercise independent judgment in matters of significance.

What You Bring

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, Operations Research, Economics, Business Analytics, or a related technical or quantitative field. Advanced degree is a plus.

• 10+ years of relevant experience spanning technical program management, data analytics, product or engineering operations, business transformation, or a related discipline, including experience operating as a senior individual contributor.

• Demonstrated ability to use business intelligence tools and analytical methods to independently explore data, validate opportunities and define outcome measures.

• Proven success leading complex, multi-team technical programs from ideation through delivery, adoption, and benefits realization without direct authority.

• Strong quantitative problem-solving skills, including experience with experimentation, forecasting, KPI design, root-cause analysis, and evaluation of uncertainty and tradeoffs.

• Working knowledge of modern software, cloud, data, and AI systems sufficient to engage credibly with architects and engineers and translate between technical and business contexts.

• Exceptional ability to bring structure to ambiguity, frame decisions, prioritize competing opportunities, and move diverse stakeholders toward action.

• Outstanding executive communication, facilitation, negotiation, and data-storytelling skills, with the ability to make complex issues clear and decision ready.

• Deep change-management expertise, including stakeholder engagement, organizational readiness, adoption strategy, communications, and sustained behavior change.

• Demonstrated curiosity, resilience, and a change-agent mindset, with a record of challenging the status quo constructively and delivering measurable impact.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in advertising technology, digital media, streaming, marketplaces, or other high-volume, data-intensive technology environments.

• Experience optimizing domains such as platform performance, cloud or infrastructure cost, operational workflows, inventory and yield, campaign outcomes, reliability, or engineering productivity.

• Experience building optimization portfolios, value cases, prioritization frameworks, OKRs, and benefits-realization mechanisms across multiple teams.

• Hands-on experience identifying, evaluating, piloting, or deploying AI and LLM capabilities, including attention to data quality, security, privacy, governance, evaluation, and human oversight.

• Familiarity with agile and product operating models, software delivery practices, data platforms, experimentation, and technology portfolio governance.

Success in This Role

• A prioritized pipeline of optimization opportunities is maintained with clear evidence, ownership, value potential, and decision criteria.

• Cross-functional technical programs move from ambiguity and ideation to aligned plans, decisive execution, and sustained adoption.

• Initiatives deliver measurable improvements in business outcomes, customer value, engineering effectiveness, cost, performance, or operational efficiency.

• AI and LLM use cases advance through disciplined evaluation into responsible, scalable capabilities where evidence supports investment.

• Stakeholders understand the case for change, leaders have clear decision visibility, and new ways of working are adopted and sustained.

About FreeWheel

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides technology solutions for the advertising industry. FreeWheel enables publishers, advertisers, and media buyers to manage, deliver, optimize, and measure advertising across premium video, streaming, and digital channels. Our teams combine deep industry expertise with large-scale technology and data capabilities to help customers navigate a rapidly changing media ecosystem.

Employees at All Levels Are Expected To

• Understand our Operating Principles and make them the guidelines for how you do your job.

• Own the customer experience: think and act in ways that put customers first, provide seamless digital options at every touchpoint and make customers promoters of our products and services.

• Know your stuff be enthusiastic learners, users, and advocates of our game-changing technology, products, and services, especially our digital tools and experiences.

• Win as a team: make big things happen by working together and being open to new ideas.

• Be an active part of the Net Promoter System by bringing employee and customer feedback into the company and helping elevate opportunities to improve.

• Drive results and growth.

• Support a culture of inclusion in how you work and lead.

• Do what is right for each other, our customers, investors, and our communities.

Additional Role Requirements

• Regular, consistent, and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends or variable schedules as necessary.

• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Disclaimer: This information describes the general nature and level of work performed by employees in this role. It is not intended to be a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, or qualification

Skills

Business, Data Analytics, Data Science, Prioritization, Quantitative Analysis, Strategic Planning

We believe that benefits should connect you to the support you need when it matters most, and should help you care for those who matter most. That's why we provide an array of options, expert guidance and always-on tools that are personalized to meet the needs of your reality—to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life.

Please visit the benefits summary on our careers site for more details.

Education

Bachelor's Degree

While possessing the stated degree is preferred, Comcast also may consider applicants who hold some combination of coursework and experience, or who have extensive related professional experience.

Certifications (if applicable)

Relevant Work Experience

15 Years +

Comcast is an equal opportunity workplace. We will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.