How to become a Project/Program Manager in Tech in 2025
Tips on how to carve out a role and reflections from a Program Manager
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Introduction: Delivery Roles in Tech
This article is meant to highlight my experience in working in delivery-focused roles in the Tech Industry and help you reflect on the key skills required, what a typical day in life looks like, and offer tips on how to break into the field and keep developing once you’re in it.
I have 7 years of experience working in project-centric organizations, whether in Consulting (Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte Analytics) and for the last 3.5 years at MongoDB, a prominent and fast-growing player in the modern database software space.
A first note about what I meant by Delivery Roles: these are usually represented by titles such as Project Manager, Program Manager, Technical Program Manager, Delivery Lead, Scrum Master, and Agile Project Manager. In this article, I’ll be using Project Manager as an umbrella term for all of these, for simplicity, though there are variations within each that are out of scope for this article (no pun intended).
Overall, these all represent different shades of roles that focus on ensuring that projects and programs (coordinated sets of projects tied to a larger organization goal) run smoothly from inception to release.
When people ask me what I do, I often reply that I ensure “things happen as they’re meant to”, (sounds nice in theory, but does not often happen in practice) whether that means implementing new software, fixing a broken process, and working with engineers and business people across the company to help them get stuff done. I expand on specific examples below.
With this, let’s dive in and help you figure out whether this can be a great next role for you and an opportunity to break into the tech world in 2025.
My path to landing a Project Manager role in Tech
Believe it or not, joining MongoDB as a Project Manager was not something I had been planning, but a move that was more serendipitous than what I’d like to believe.
I dive into my career journey so far in another article:
How I tripled my salary in 3 years: job hopper Journey in Data Analytics
Practical tips to think about when carving out your own path
In short, I had spent close to 3 years working in Consulting, both from a high-level strategic angle and as a Data Analyst and Programmer. I refer you to another article of mine on the key differences I found between these two worlds.
The opportunity came up as I was nearing 2 years of tenure at Deloitte when a MongoDB recruiter reached out for a role in the Sales Operations world. I thought this was a great opportunity for various reasons:
It was my chance to move from the Consulting world over to Tech.
The role was challenging and represented a “step up” vs the Consultant role I had been working on in the past.
I saw a great opportunity to be mentored by my first functional manager, the person who brought me and who had inspired me to take the chance on the role during the interview process. In Consulting I had not had a manager solely responsible for my development and this was a fantastic chance to learn from someone experienced in the field.
I would be lying if I mentioned I was fully aware of all the aspects and details of what the new job would mean for my career, but as a young professional, both the company and the role sounded appealing, the hiring manager super supportive and smart, so I decided to just take the role.
Let’s dive into what happened over the next 3+ years.
What do Project Managers in Tech actually do? An Example from My Journey
Project Managers are usually seen as a Generalist-type role, but their general set of skills is often applied to a specific subject matter area or department of the business they cover.
For example, in my experience, I’ve been focusing on working as a Project Manager in the Sales Operations world at MongoDB, which is a key business function in most B2B Saas companies that have a strong go-to-market (commercial) engine and motion.
In layman's terms, Sales Operations teams focus on ensuring all processes and systems that support B2B sales teams are as optimized and as efficient as possible to make the sales teams they support more productive and ultimately increase the chances of winning more revenue for the business as a whole.
Here’s a summary of my career path at MongoDB since I joined and example projects I’ve worked on.
Year 1: Sales Operations Project Manager, working in the department and close to Salesforce Administrators and/or Sales Operations process
Year 2: Promoted to Sales Operations Senior Project Manager. Same role, just bigger and more projects to work on in the same department and with the same team.
Year 3 — present: Working as a Technical Program Manager in the Tech Operations department within a specific Project Management Office (PMO). PMOs are usually prevalent in companies that are keen to use projects and programs as more structured means to deliver and manage change within a business and ensure initiatives are strategically aligned with the company goals.
Also, leaving you with a list of specific projects I worked on. Again, note how these are very centered on the SalesOps domain in my case, but should give you a feel of the type of activities I worked on, and the skills you can develop by working on similar projects. We’ll dive into key skills next to be an effective Project Manager in the Tech world.
Example Projects
1. Sales Technology Implementation Initiative
Example Software: Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive
Project Description: Managed and coordinated Salesforce Lightning migration for 1500+ Sales & Marketing employees, focusing on project planning & scheduling, User Acceptance testing, and Go Live activities
2. Sales Productivity Analysis
Example Software: Tableau, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Outreach
Project Description Managed user research efforts to understand & quantify key productivity blockers for sales reps and coordinated the build of the sales technology project roadmap; presented results to GTM Executive Staff
3. Sales Support Software Implementation
Example Software: Zendesk
Project Description: Managed and coordinated the launch of ZenDesk as a support platform for enterprise sales in collaboration with IT, focusing on requirements gathering across 7 operations teams
4. Sales Forecasting Implementation Project
Example Software: Clari
Project Description: Managed and coordinated Sales Forecasting Software Implementation for ~1000+ GTM employees, focusing on UAT, Enablement, and Release activities
The Skills you need to become an effective Project Manager in Tech
I break down the skills required alongside a matrix view. There are more facets and layers than just one, but the key skills can be grouped around:
General Project Management skills: being familiar with how to run projects, the key phases of a project, how to work around risks, communication, stakeholder management, cost, schedule, resources, and the classic components they teach you at PMI.org. Especially for the Tech sector, being adept at working in Agile environments and familiar with the Software Development Life Cycle best practices
Business Skills: being familiar with the company domain, or industry vertical you operate in. In my case, this means the Database world within the Information Technology (IT) vertical. Being familiar with the market trends, key dynamics, competitors, and technology innovations can set you apart and showcase a deep understanding of the domain you’ll be working in, which will increase both your chances of being hired and being more effective in your role once you’re hired.
Technical Skills: especially in the Tech industry, being technically adept at coding, data analysis, and presentation skills is a must. There’s also a good number of tools you’ll be expected to know to a point where you can be dangerous enough and contribute effectively to technical conversations or at least understand the implications of those conversations for the project at hand.
Professional Skills: often the harder to master, with this bucket I refer to being able to communicate effectively, handle change, handle conflict, handle the bad times, showcase empathy with your colleagues, and overall being a good human and good professional. This may be obvious to you but in this role, the Project Manager is often entrenched in deeply understanding the team he/she is working with/for, and the more you’re able to be easy to work with, the more effective you’ll be in the long run.
How you can learn these skills
All of these skills can be learned, no matter the category. There are multiple ways to do so and below I will leave you with some of the ones I found most useful for me. I am a firm believer that no one will ever become a true master of these skills, for learning is for life and you will always find yourself with ample margin to improve along all dimensions.
The key is to accept this, stay curious, and simply keep learning. You can apply these learning methods at all times, to both prepare for an entry-level role in tech and to keep enhancing your skills once you have a role
Online Courses: My favorite (that’s probably why I have it at the top of this) and super useful to sharpen your Technical and Business Skills
I go deep on these in a related article:
4 reasons to take Software Engineering & Data Science courses as a Technical Project Manager
And how to use these become more valuable
You can also feel free to reach out to me and ask me for specific recommendations, as these will be pretty much based on the technical domain of choice you’ll be focusing on.
Books: if you’re a fan of paper, here are a few of the resources I recommend to check out and refer to throughout your journey
PMBOK Guide: the Project Management bible. I literally had this on my work desk on day 1 as I started at MongoDB and it’s always a helpful reference, no matter the industry vertical you work in
Agile Books: the best resource for everything on the Agile methodology
Mentorship: consider joining a mentorship program, either at your company or externally, to grow, exchange ideas, and develop your career by relying on people who are in it. I have a great mentor at MongoDB that I rely on every month, and I find the collaboration invaluable. You can also reach out to me directly if you’re interested in working together.
On-the-Job Experience: probably the best way to learn, but this assumes you already broke into the field.
Professional Exams/Certifications/Online Courses: leaving you with a few certs and courses I found extremely valuable to develop across all skills dimensions: Professional Scrum Master™ I Certification (Agile focused), Zero To Mastery Academy (for your technical skills), PMP Exam (General PM skills → I’m actually studying for this one)
How to land a role
When it comes to actually landing a Project Manager role in Tech, there are five main considerations I want to leave you with:
Lean on your network: start reaching out to your network for interesting opportunities in their realm. Even if they don’t work in tech, there may be open project manager opportunities you can leverage as a “bridge” to start to carve out a profile for you as you prep for your entry in tech, especially in a slower job market when it comes to hiring trends.
Understand it’s a numbers game: Patience is the name of the game at the moment. You will likely need to build a solid pipeline of applications > interviews > offers before landing a good role. Do not mass-apply randomly, but also take your time to understand your profile and the job descriptions/company types you’d like to apply to. Once done, build a list of companies/roles and treat it as your database and project tracker for all of your job-searching updates.
Position your current and future skills: the right time to start building the skills you need is now, but you may already have developed skills in your past/current experience that you can immediately leverage in your job search. Maybe you have already worked with difficult stakeholders at your company and can cite project examples where you handled communication and project reporting tasks that are more formally part of the Project Manager role you’re keen on landing. So don’t discredit your current experience and check how you can repurpose your CV and past projects to your Project Manager search.
Check out internal mobility opportunities: if you’re currently working, speak to your team/manager about potential Project Manager role opportunities at your current job. You may be surprised by what you can find even without leaving your turf!
Develop experience via side projects: many things in life are run as projects, so you can use unconventional examples of how you apply project management skills as a way to demonstrate your upskilling. Organized a wedding for your friends with 300 people? Speak to it. Developed a side-project with 3–4 collaborators? You can likely speak to how you project managed certain parts of it
Overall, project management is such a ubiquitous practice, that it is likely you can pull multiple of these levers to give yourself the best chance of being hired!
In summary: Take the Leap in 2025
Overall, working as a Project Manager in Tech has been a highly enriching experience, and I hope my article has helped you understand this role a bit more and certain ways you can ensure you land a similar one!
Please share your experience with me and reach out in the comments or to me directly if you have additional questions!
Best of luck, enjoy the ride, and thanks for reading!
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