Senior Culture Program Manager

At Chainguard, culture isn’t an afterthought — it’s how we scale. Our Culture & Belonging team exists to build leadership systems that help people do the best work of their careers, while creating a workplace rooted in trust, clarity, and belonging.

As we grow, manager enablement becomes one of our biggest multipliers. We’re looking for a Senior Program Manager to own and evolve our manager experience end to end — from leadership development to day-to-day management habits.

This role sits at the intersection of leadership development, employee experience, and modern enablement. You’ll lead our flagship programs like How We Lead and How We Manage, build community for managers, and partner deeply with People Partners, executives, and the broader Culture team.

If you love building programs that are practical, human, and actually used — this role is for you.

• Lead "How We Lead": Own our flagship leadership development program, evolving it from a static framework into a living practice embedded in the flow of work.
• Build "How We Manage": Design and launch our "Manager 101" program, focusing on managing remotely, effective 1:1s, team rituals, and operational excellence—leveraging AI to provide just-in-time coaching and prompts.
• Drive Upward Feedback: Partner with People Partners to manage bi-annual upward feedback cycles, ensuring insights lead to actionable development for managers.
• Nurture Communities of Practice: Facilitate monthly manager All Hands and build spaces where leaders can solve problems, share "oops" moments, and learn together.
• Scale Manager Onboarding: Design the first 90 days for new managers to ensure they hit the ground running with the "Chainguard Way" of leadership.
• Champion External Branding: Partner with Marketing to showcase our culture on LinkedIn, RepVue, and other platforms—telling the story of what it’s like to build and lead here.
• Support Culture Milestones: Co-lead leadership offsites and major summits to create high-impact, "wonderfully weird" employee experiences.

• How We Lead and How We Manage are highly adopted, well-loved, and measurably impactful
• Managers report clearer expectations and stronger day-to-day effectiveness
• Leadership behaviors improve across engagement and upward feedback data
• Programs feel practical, modern, and human — not theoretical or checkbox-driven
• External culture presence feels authentic, responsive, and aligned with how we actually operate
• You’re a trusted partner to People Partners, leaders, and executives

• 7+ years in L&D, Employee Experience, or Program Management: You’ve built and scaled leadership programs in high-growth environments.
• Prompt Engineering Savvy: You don't just use AI; you know how to build advanced prompts to generate curriculum, role-play scenarios, and feedback loops.
• Modern L&D Toolkit: You prefer "just-in-time" enablement over 4-hour workshops. You understand RAG-based learning, micro-learning, and social learning.
• Storytelling Flair: You can write a LinkedIn post that stops the scroll and design a slide deck that feels like a brand, not a lecture.
• The "Chainguard Vibe": You believe belonging is a business driver and you operate with "Yes, And" energy.

(Not required — but you’ll stand out if you bring these)

• Prompt Engineering & AI Curiosity: You don’t just use ChatGPT for emails; you know how to design sophisticated prompts that act as coaching assistants or curriculum generators.
• Vibe-Coding & Prototyping: You dabble in "vibe-coding" (using tools like Replit, Bolt, or Cursor) to build quick prototypes, landing pages, or tools that solve culture friction.
• Automation Mindset: You’re comfortable with Google Apps Script or Zapier to automate the "boring stuff" (like 1:1 reminders or feedback aggregation) so you can focus on the human stuff.
• Experimental Bias: You’d rather ship a "Minimum Viable Program" today and iterate based on real feedback than spend six months building a slide deck no one reads.
• Trend Translator: You keep tabs on bleeding-edge L&D trends (cohort-based learning, RAG-based knowledge bases) and know how to make them work in a practical, startup environment.

• Experience at a high-growth startup or scaling organization
• Background in belonging, culture, or organizational effectiveness
• Experience supporting global or distributed teams
• Familiarity with cohort-based learning and communities of practice

As Chainguard grows, we can’t scale leadership through instinct alone. We need clear expectations, shared habits, and scalable systems for how people lead and manage.

This role shapes how leadership shows up every day — and ensures our culture stays strong as we grow.