Two roles crossed my feed this week, both carrying the title Program Manager, and they could not have described more different jobs.

One is effectively a transformation leadership seat: owning an AI-enabled risk roadmap, managing investment portfolios, running vendor RFPs and contract reviews, translating strategy for executives, overseeing data platforms across a large institution. The other, also called Program Manager, is built almost entirely around PI planning, Scrum of Scrums, backlog tagging in Azure DevOps, burndown metrics, and coaching agile teams through ceremonies. Read the actual verbs and the second one sits much closer to a Scrum Master or Release Train Engineer than to someone who owns budget and vendor decisions.

I don't think two postings prove a trend, but it's a useful flag. My read is that Program Manager has become an elastic label, stretched to cover both strategic ownership and team-level facilitation depending on how an organization has structured its delivery layer. That elasticity creates real friction for candidates and for hiring managers who assume the title alone communicates scope.

A few things I'd actually check before assuming I know what a Program Manager role is: map the verbs in the JD rather than the title, since "own investment decisions" and "coach the team" are not interchangeable. Ask directly who owns budget, vendor selection, and executive escalation versus who owns ceremonies and flow metrics. If you're writing the posting, spell out decision rights explicitly rather than letting the title carry that weight. And if you're evaluating an offer, use reporting line and compensation band as a cross-check against the stated title.

Have you seen the same title cover two genuinely different jobs like this, and how did you figure out which one was actually on the table?

Evidence and methodology: https://ai.intelligence.strategichonesty.com/reports/two-postings-this-week-show-job