Senior Program Manager, Operations Engineering

Zillow

5d • $112,700 - $189,400 • Remote

About The Position

Zillow Media Experts (ZMX) is Zillow’s in-house real estate photography and media services business within Zillow’s Media organization. Our mission is to fulfill the media marketing needs of real estate agents, builders, and multi-family rental operators across the United States. The ZMX Program Management & Analytics team sits at the nexus of growth, product, and operations, creating ZMX strategy and executing across revenue performance, product development, workforce planning, and operational excellence. Our scope spans pricing and channel strategy, strategic partnerships, product roadmap prioritization, platform optimization, workforce and headcount planning, forecasting, compliance, and change management. We define and measure the operational KPIs that drive business performance, build analytical frameworks that inform decision-making, and lead cross-functional initiatives that improve scalability, efficiency, and customer experience. Our team is analytical, execution-oriented, and thrives in a complex, fast-moving environment where clarity, rigor, and ownership matter. We are seeking a Senior Program Manager with strong quantitative skills to lead Operations Engineering initiatives for Zillow Media Experts (ZMX), Zillow’s in-house photography and media services organization. ZMX operates a distributed, field-based workforce across multiple markets, where our cost structure is driven by workforce scheduling, routing efficiency, utilization, benefits eligibility thresholds, travel time, demand variability, and operational policy design. This role combines the strengths of a program manager with the analytical depth of an operations engineer and operations research analyst. You will translate complex, real-world operational systems into quantitative frameworks, partner closely with Engineering and Data Science to evolve our scheduling optimization systems, and help improve cost structure through analytical rigor, experimentation, and process engineering. This is a hands-on role that benefits from deep operational curiosity, technical fluency, and a track record of driving measurable impact. This role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions. In California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $118,600.00 - $189,400.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations. In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont the standard base pay range for this role is $112,700.00 - $179,900.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations. In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, Engineering, Business Analytics, or related quantitative field.
• 5+ years of experience in operations-heavy environments leading analytical projects (services, logistics, marketplace, field operations, or similar).
• Deeply quantitative and systems-oriented, with strong operational curiosity.
• Fluent in SQL and comfortable independently analyzing large, complex operational datasets.
• Skilled at translating real-world operational complexity into structured models and decision frameworks.
• Comfortable working at both strategic and frontline levels, shifting between high-level design and detailed execution.
• Experienced in structured experimentation and data-informed iteration to improve processes and systems.
• Strong at influencing without formal authority and building alignment across cross-functional partners.
• Highly organized and capable of managing multiple initiatives simultaneously in a fast-moving environment.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity while maintaining analytical rigor and clear prioritization.
• A connector who understands how scheduling, workforce policy, cost structure, and software systems interact to drive business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Own and continuously refine the operational business logic and requirements for ZMX scheduling and routing systems.
• Partner with Engineering and Data Science to design, test, and improve optimization models (e.g., routing, capacity, constraint-based scheduling).
• Define and manage trade-offs across cost efficiency, compliance, fairness, customer experience, and service levels.
• Lead structured time studies and develop quantitative models of key cost drivers, including labor, utilization, travel time, and benefits eligibility exposure.
• Support workforce planning by modeling headcount, utilization, and the impact of scheduling rules and operational policies.
• Identify, prioritize, and execute cost-reduction and scalability initiatives through process re-engineering, systems improvements, and automation opportunities.
• Define and institutionalize core operational KPIs and build and maintain dashboards and reporting frameworks (SQL, Tableau or equivalent) to track performance.
• Translate complex analytical insights into clear recommendations and lead cross-functional initiatives that improve operational efficiency and scalability.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level