Technical Program Manager at Veeam

Scaling Security Processes with AI

Alex Lee joined Veeam as a Technical Program Manager on the Veeam Data Cloud (VDC) Security Engineering team, and within weeks she was already rebuilding how a twelve-person, globally dispersed team works together. Her team is responsible for the security controls protecting VDC, the company's backup as a service platform.

"My understanding is that the team was only four or five people a year ago, and the VDC product has only existed for about two years. We're growing really fast, and with that we need to scale better, especially given that we're geographically dispersed."

What Does a Technical Program Manager Do on the VDC Security Team at Veeam USA?

Alex supports the team's incident response program and vulnerability management program, alongside general change management. Her team spans Australia, the United States, and Czech Republic, having grown out of a series of acquisitions.

"It seems like it's more of a startup mindset, making things work. Now I think we're at a point where we're scaling really fast and we need scalable processes that are consistent across teams, to help improve collaboration with how we work, how we track our work, and getting people using the same processes and rhythms, so that we can continue to scale and remove toil and friction in how we work."

Why Did Alex Lee Leave a Smaller Tech Company to Join Veeam USA?

She assumed a larger company like Veeam would have more established processes already in place, an assumption that turned out to be wrong and became the opportunity she was looking for.

"I wanted to take my skill set in program management and really challenge myself in a new environment. All companies have different problems that they need to solve, and I felt I could take my baseline skills and help improve the processes unique to Veeam, which would be good for my career growth as well."

How Is AI Changing the Way Program Managers Work at Veeam USA?

AI plays a central role in how Alex supports her team day to day.

We use Claude Cowork quite a bit, and I've mostly been using it to streamline our program management processes. I'm able to build automations and skills and give them to my teammates to help them write project charters, status updates, and document risks. I was able to build and scale a program management framework for the team very quickly.

Alex Lee

Technical Program Manager

Getting technical teams to adopt new tracking processes is not always straightforward.

"In the past, working with more technical people, it can be challenging to get them bought into tracking their work in a way that's more visible. By using AI to scale processes, there's been less friction. We're getting outcomes faster, and I'm able to scale to my team in a way where I get more buy-in."

What Is It Like to Learn a New Technical Field as a New Joiner at Veeam USA?

Security was a new specialism for Alex, and AI became a personal learning tool as much as a team scaling one.

"Using AI as a starting point, to ask, can you help me understand what this alert is or what this person is talking about, has been so helpful. You can say, help me understand this like I'm a fifth grader. That's been a really helpful way to use AI, especially as a new employee at a company."

Veeam's own products presented a similar learning curve. Unlike the tools she has used directly in past roles, VDC is not something most employees interact with personally, which made AI a useful way to understand both how customers use the product and how it could be exploited from a security perspective.

How Does a Globally Dispersed Team at Veeam USA Build Real Collaboration?

With team members across three continents and only two people in the San Jose office, most collaboration happens virtually by necessity. Alex has been building that connection with intention, including hosting a full team retrospective where everyone contributed ideas for how to work better together.

"Getting to know how someone works is hard to do virtually. When you're in the office, you can turn to someone next to you and chat. You have to be a lot more intentional about working together and getting to know people when you're virtual."

That intentionality extends beyond process improvements into the social fabric of the team. Alex has helped run lighter touch initiatives too, including a guess-the-desk contest and recurring channels where people share photos from their weekends.

"We're really trying to build community that way, because we can't all be together, and that makes it a little harder."

What Kind of Impact Can a New Hire Have at Veeam USA?

Alex's manager had previously worked with her at a different company, which gave her an existing foundation of trust that let her contribute meaningfully early on. When her manager planned to send the team a single large announcement covering several organisational changes at once, Alex pushed back on the approach.

"I gave him feedback that we should think about how this is going to land with different employees, and break it up into different messages, and be intentional about what employees are going to feel when they hear an org chart change. He was very receptive to taking that feedback and hearing my perspective."

Beyond individual process changes, Alex sees her team's work as carrying weight that extends well past Veeam itself. Security incidents and ransomware attacks are a constant threat to the infrastructure businesses depend on.

"Working within cybersecurity, you have such a big impact on the product and the tool, to ensure customers' data is safe and secure, which ties right back to what Veeam's product is."

Why Join the VDC Security Team at Veeam USA?

Veeam gives a new technical program manager the room to reshape how a fast-growing, globally dispersed security team works, supported by a manager and leadership who are genuinely receptive to feedback. The team is small enough that one person's ideas can change company-wide processes within weeks, with modern AI tools like Claude Cowork built directly into daily work. For someone who wants to specialise in a technical field while having a direct hand in how their team operates, Veeam offers both at once. Go fearlessly forward.