Manager, Competitive Programs

Title: Manager, Competitive Programs Location: NYC, Seattle, SF, Remote

Who we are

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone's reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About the team

The Competitive Programs team, which is part of the Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategic Programs team, is a new team dedicated to establishing and scaling Stripe’s Competitive Programs capability. Stripe operates in a dynamic and evolving competitive landscape. This role will help Stripe understand market developments and translate competitive insights into actionable guidance for teams and users.

The Competitive Programs team works alongside Market Intelligence to help Stripe identify meaningful threats and opportunities early, mobilize coordinated action across the company in priority situations, and turn market and deal signals into better Product, Marketing, and GTM decisions. We build the competitive operating system—program design, cross-functional coordination, deal-routing mechanisms, visibility, and accountability—while Product, Sales, PMM, Pricing, and other functions retain ownership for decisions and delivery in their domains.

This is a full-stack program manager role - the manager will be responsible for both building the team and running competitive programs. We are looking for a versatile leader who is excited to build something from the ground up and can apply the same skills to other high-priority GTM initiatives as the team’s mandate and Stripe’s needs evolve.

What you’ll do

You will lead and develop a team of program managers responsible for helping Stripe compete more effectively in its highest-priority competitive situations. You will turn an emerging capability into a durable operating model: establish the team’s goals and work plans, partner with Stripe leadership to determine where to deploy scarce program capacity, and ensure named competitor programs are well run, measurable, and connected to the functional teams that own decisions and delivery.

This is a high-ambiguity management role. You will work with senior leaders across Sales, Product, Product Operations, Marketing, Market Intelligence, Pricing, Finance & Strategy, and GTM Operations to turn unclear competitive problems into focused programs with clear objectives, owners, decision forums, operating cadences, and measures of success.

Initially, you will:

• Lead and develop the Competitive Programs team, setting clear objectives, assigning work, coaching program managers, and maintaining a high bar for judgment, execution, and stakeholder management.
• Establish the portfolio and operating model for centrally staffed P0 and P1 competitor programs, in partnership with Market Intelligence and GTM Strategic Programs leadership.
• Manage the highest-complexity competitive programs directly, particularly where Stripe must coordinate across Product, GTM, Commercial, and executive stakeholders.
• Build the repeatable playbooks and mechanisms that allow Stripe to respond to competitive threats quickly and learn at scale, without centralizing functional decisions that belong elsewhere.

You will be successful in this role if you are excited to build a new function from the ground up and tenacious at motivating XFN partners across the company to build a repeatable structure and deliver against Stripe’s top competitive priorities.  You will be a trusted partner to executive leaders across Sales, Product, Product Operations, Marketing, Market Intelligence, Pricing, Finance & Strategy, and GTM Operations. You will help influence decision making around Product roadmap, commercial-policy, or account-strategy decisions and ensure the right functional owners are engaged, accountable, and able to make decisions at the pace required.  You will need (1) superior communication skills to work across senior stakeholders from different functions and (2) are someone who thrives when solving complex problems with limited oversight.

Responsibilities

• Set the team’s SOKRs, portfolio priorities in partnership with Stripe leadership, work plans, and success measures; allocate program-management capacity across the highest-priority competitive needs.
• Develop, coach, and retain a high-performing team of program managers capable of operating independently in ambiguous, high-stakes environments.
• Directly lead the design, launch, and lifecycle management of centrally staffed P0 and P1 competitor programs, including recommendations to continue, adjust, graduate, or re-elevate programs as the market changes.
• Coach program managers as they also design, launch, and lifecycle management of centrally staffed P0 and P1 competitor programs, including recommendations to continue, adjust, graduate, or re-elevate programs as the market changes.
• Build and continuously improve the program-management layer of Stripe’s competitive operating system, including playbooks, program standards, decision logs, operating reviews, escalation mechanisms, and executive reporting.
• Partner closely with Market Intelligence to translate competitive, customer, and deal signals into prioritized program actions; partner with Product, PMM, Sales, Pricing, and Product S&O to ensure those actions have accountable functional owners.
• Create clear, decision-oriented updates for senior leadership on program health, competitive risks, outcomes, capacity needs, and recommendations.
• Lead the identification and operationalization of the “competing fiercely” cultural change, surfacing systemic friction, and ensuring the right functional teams own durable solutions.
• Apply the team’s program-design and execution capabilities to other strategic GTM priorities as business needs evolve.

Who you are

We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

You are a strategic, hands-on people leader who is energized by ambiguous, cross-functional business problems. You can set direction without waiting for perfect information, while maintaining enough operational rigor to ensure your team delivers durable results.

You know how to move between executive-level strategy and program detail: helping senior leaders make trade-offs, owning your own P0/P1 competitor programs all while ensuring teams have clear owners, milestones, decisions, and measures of success. You build trust across functions, but you are also comfortable naming risk, resolving ambiguity, and holding stakeholders accountable to commitments.

You are excited by the intersection of market dynamics, competitors, product strategy, commercial strategy, GTM execution, and organizational change. You recognize that a central Competitive Programs team should not replace functional ownership; its value is making the company faster, more coordinated, and more effective in priority situations.

Minimum requirements

• 9+ years of experience in program management, business operations, GTM strategy, management consulting, or a related discipline, including experience in a Sales, Marketing, Product, GTM Operations, or other commercial organization.
• 2+ years of people-management experience, including setting team objectives, assigning work, coaching and developing experienced individual contributors, and managing performance.
• Comfort with being a player-coach. Works well under pressure, with a high degree of adaptability and flexibility in a fast paced, rapidly changing environment.
• Demonstrated success leading complex and ambiguous cross-functional programs from problem definition through implementation, adoption, and durable operational handoff.
• Experience managing global programs across regions, segments, and product lines, including experience establishing program goals, work plans, operating cadences, decision forums, and success measures for complex initiatives with multiple stakeholders.
• Strong judgment in prioritizing competing demands and allocating limited team capacity against the highest-value work.
• Experience navigating senior stakeholders with differing incentives, priorities, and decision rights; ability to drive alignment while making trade-offs and escalation paths explicit.
• Proven ability to structure ambiguous qualitative and quantitative inputs into clear recommendations for senior leaders.
• Strong executive communication skills, including decision-oriented reporting, facilitation of senior working sessions and ability to communicate risks or trade-offs directly.
• Strong analytical skills and comfort using data to assess program health, identify risks, measure outcomes, and guide prioritization.
• A high degree of ownership, sound judgement, adaptability, and comfort leading through rapid change.
• An enthusiastic “roll up your sleeves mentality” paired with a collaborative working style that builds trust.
• Someone who demonstrates leadership qualities throughout their work – taking ownership of challenges, selflessly supporting their colleagues, and setting the standard for quality in their deliverables.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience managing competitive programs, strategic-account programs, product-launch programs, commercial transformation, or other high-stakes GTM initiatives.
• Experience building a new operating model, program-management team, or repeatable playbook from the ground up.
• Experience working closely with Product, Product Operations, PMM, Sales, Pricing, Finance & Strategy, Market Intelligence, and GTM Systems teams.
• Familiarity with competitive intelligence, win/loss analysis, sales enablement, pricing, commercial strategy, product-feedback mechanisms, or executive account programs.
• Experience at a B2B technology, enterprise software, fintech, payments, or platform company.
• Comfort with SQL, BI tools, or other methods of analyzing pipeline, adoption, revenue, and operational data.