Amanda Kirchem

dentsu | ex AWS | ex Zapier

Austin, Texas, United States

About

I build happy teams of skilled people who do great work, bringing deep experience in program management across video game, semiconductor, and SaaS industries. I have hands-on experience managing all aspects of the software development life cycle in both startup and large-scale corporate environments, leading co-located and distributed teams. I am passionate about empowering teams through effective communication, just-enough planning, and pragmatic leadership. Key Skills • Workflow Automation & AI Adoption • Agile Program Management • Engineering Operations, Dev Ops • People Management, Team, Org, Office Building • Process Development and Documentation • Managing Cross-functional and Distributed teams

Experience

  • Sr Program Manager - Technology Development at dentsu
    Jun 2026 - Present · 2 mos

  • Sr. TPM, AWS Security at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Jan 2025 - Apr 2026 · 1 yr 4 mos

    - Owned security review process optimization program leading to a 70% reduction in cycle time to deliver security reviews to customers. - Managed relationships and shared processes with customers in the AWS Sales and Marketing organizations to ensure clear prioritization and readiness practices for a 60k person organization. Optimizations contributed to zero escalations and on-time delivery of security reviews for re:Invent 2025. - Developed and owned organization’s business intelligence program, including creating datasets and dashboards in QuickSuite. - Efforts enabled real-time accurate metrics for engineering team health and security review pipeline oversight. - Owned Monthly Business Review covering operations and health of five security teams for executive stakeholders.

  • Zapier (4 yrs)
    • Sr Technical Program Manager
      Oct 2022 - Jan 2025 · 2 yrs 4 mos

      - Support the broader Engineering and Build Org at Zapier. - Program manage both technical development efforts and engineering operations initiatives.

    • Senior Agile Practitioner
      Feb 2021 - Oct 2022 · 1 yr 9 mos

      - Servant leader to the Production Engineering Zone in Engineering Services - Coach teams on agile principles and adoption - Facilitate quarterly planning, monthly and quarterly reports - Special Projects - pick up and run special projects for the Build Org as needed - Global Atlassian Administration and JIRA System Administration

  • Cvent (5 yrs 11 mos)
    • Technical Program Manager
      Aug 2019 - Feb 2021 · 1 yr 7 mos

    • Senior Agile Project Manager
      Jul 2017 - Jul 2019 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      • Managed two product lines with 12 onshore and 6 offshore teams. • Directly managed a team of 4-6 Scrum Masters. • Served on Regional Office Council leadership team for Austin. • Facilitated quarterly Leadership Rally for program lines, driving cross-organizational process improvements. • Provided quarterly updates and metrics for executive and board review.

    • Senior Scrum Master
      Apr 2015 - Jul 2017 · 2 yrs 4 mos

      • Managed four scrum teams on the Enterprise product line using basic Scrum, Kanban, and Hyper Productive Scrum methodologies. • Guided and coached sprint teams and external stakeholders on Agile adoption. • Facilitated all Scrum ceremonies including daily stand-ups, sprint planning, backlog grooming, sprint demos/reviews, and retrospectives. • Chaired monthly stakeholder reviews and prepared project status reports. • Resolved or escalated team blockers ensuring quick resolution. • Worked with Product Owners and other Project Managers to ensure cross team dependencies were properly planned and scoped. • Worked with Product Owners to facilitate requirements development and effective grooming sessions. • Provided system administration support for Atlassian tools (JIRA, Confluence, Service Desk) to a technology department of 1400+ users.

  • Program Manager at Cycorp
    Sep 2014 - Apr 2015 · 8 mos

    • Managed three Artificial Intelligence development teams. Projects included an EDU/STEM video game, and several projects under NDA. • Facilitated user testing sessions with local students and educators. • Coached organization through initial adoption of Agile. • Facilitated all Scrum ceremonies including daily stand-ups, sprint planning, backlog grooming, sprint demos/reviews, and retrospectives. • Provided status reports and project updates to external stakeholders. • Supported the COO and Dpt Director in general office administration and compliance documentation.