Program Manager

Careem is building the Everything App for the greater Middle East — making it easy to move around, order food and groceries, manage payments, and more. Our purpose is simple: to simplify and improve people’s lives and build an awesome organisation that inspires. Since 2012, Careem has enabled earnings for over 2.5 million Captains, simplified the lives of more than 70 million customers, and built a platform where the region’s best talent and entrepreneurs thrive. We operate in 70+ cities across 10 countries, from Morocco to Pakistan. We’re now entering our next chapter — one powered by AI. We’re looking for AI talent: curious problem-solvers who know how to apply AI to build tools, automate workflows, and create real impact. Whether it’s streamlining operations, enhancing customer experience, or reimagining internal systems — we want people who can make Careem work smarter and move faster. About the role As a Program Manager within the Product organisation, you will be the bridge that brings colleagues together to deliver complex, cross-functional technical initiatives — often with tight deadlines and multi-layered dependencies. You will build relationships grounded in trust and integrity across the organisation and with third-party partners, enabling you to break through collaboration barriers, resolve conflicts, and manage risks effectively. This role sits within the Rides Product team, which leads product strategy and delivery for the Rides vertical to simplify mobility for customers. You will play a critical role ensuring complex programmes land on time, to a high standard, and with full visibility across the organisation — including across third-party integration boundaries. What you'll do - Work closely with engineers, product managers, designers, researchers, data analysts, commercial leaders, and operations teams to conceptualise cross-functional initiatives with layered dependencies and plan their execution - Organise and align multiple stakeholders — including third-party partners — to drive timely, accountable execution - Develop a solid understanding of the technical architecture to exercise sound judgment on risks, trade-offs, and cross-team dependencies - Drive progress transparency through structured communication of status, blockers, and upcoming milestones across all levels of the organisation - Lead incident coordination, post-mortems, and closure of action items to build systemic resilience over time - Own go-live orchestration for major launches — including rollout gates, rollback triggers, and cross-functional readiness sign-offs - Track and flag resourcing risks to support delivery pace and quality - Maintain the programme's source of truth: decision logs, dependency registers, and status documentation - Contribute to process improvement within the programme scope — identifying friction points and proposing better ways of working - Support and contribute to tools and dashboards that surface delivery health, pace, and quality for the Rides vertical - Embed AI tooling into core programme workflows — synthesizing meeting intelligence, surfacing dependency risks, and maintaining high-quality stakeholder comms at pace — and actively raise the team's capability to do the same What you'll need - 5+ years of experience as a Program Manager in a fast-paced engineering organisation - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field - Strong technical aptitude with the ability to understand distributed systems and architectural trade-offs - Background in fundamental engineering concepts including SSDLC, testing methodologies, API monitoring metrics, and SLAs - Proficiency with Agile delivery frameworks (Scrum, SAFe, or equivalent) - Experience managing programmes with significant third-party integration dependencies - Familiarity with programme management and analytics tooling (e.g. Jira, Confluence, dashboarding tools) - Operationally fluent with AI tools: for programme synthesis, risk stress-testing, and communication - Deep familiarity with the delivery complexity of programmes with significant external API and third-party integration dependencies — including SLA implications, incident ownership boundaries, and rollback constraints across organisational lines - Strong communication skills — able to distil complex information clearly for both technical and non-technical audiences - Demonstrated ability to work across multiple teams and manage cross-organisational stakeholders - Proven ability to operate with confidence in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with frequent priority shifts - Passionate problem solver who adapts their approach to evolving requirements and organisational contexts What we’ll provide you We offer colleagues the opportunity to drive impact in the region while they learn and grow. As a full time Careem colleague, you will be able to: - Work and learn from great minds by joining a community of inspiring