Manager, Competitive Programs

The shape of it

In the posting’s own words

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.

What it asks for · 13

• 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.

Also a plus

• 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.

What the job covers

• 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.
• 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.

Degree language

• 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.
• A high degree of ownership, sound judgement, adaptability, and comfort leading through rapid change.

Tools and skills named

Words the posting leans on

• programs37×
• competitive20×
• product15×
• gtm13×
• decisions12×
• market11×
• experience10×
• operating9×
• build8×
• competitive programs8×
• strategy8×
• operations7×
• sales7×
• senior7×
• functional6×
• leaders6×

Counted from the posting after the mission statement and the legal notices are set aside. The ones near the top are the ones a screener is looking for.

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