About this job

The Program Manager’s role is to successfully lead new product development programs from initial concept to production. This is a leadership position within a quickly growing company that is excited about our mission of connecting the universe.

Responsibilities

• Lead development projects. The ultimate objective for this position is to successfully lead a technical team in a fast-paced environment from inception to production. The Program Manager will utilize effective communication, problem resolution, technical decision making, and project management skills to accomplish the objectives. Success criteria for this position will be development of a collaborative working relationship with the technical team and successful completion of the assigned product development projects by meeting all customer expectations, product technical performance, deliverable milestones on schedule and budget.
• Manage external customer expectations, communications, negotiations, and scope creep. The primary goal of the Program Manager will be to successfully build and manage external customer relationships, communications, and expectations to reduce risk to the company utilizing effective communication and negotiation skills. A key skill for the program manager will be their ability to identify scope creep and raise engineering change requests to eliminate NRE cost overruns and/or schedule delays.
• Resolve problems both internal and with the customer for both technical and commercial issues. The successful Program Manager will leverage their problem resolution skills, communication skills, project management skills, and experience to resolve both technical and commercial issues with both internal and external customers in a timely and calm manner. Success criteria for this position will be resolving problems in a timely manner with positive concurrence from both sides.
• Lead product development technical & commercial proposal activities. The successful Program Manager will lead proposal efforts. Proposal generation includes NRE and recurring cost analyses, schedule estimation, contract review/negotiations, and compliance matrix generation. Success criteria for this position will be submitting the completed thorough proposal on schedule meeting all customer RFP expectations.
• Effectively communicate, verbally and in writing, with engineering, operations, upper management and external customers. The Program Manager will effectively communicate with both internal and external customers providing clear direction, planning, clarification, guidance, decisions, status, and issue resolution. Success criteria for this position will be submitting and presenting to senior management monthly program reviews and external customer quarterly program performance reviews.

Supervisory Responsibilities

This position has no direct supervisory responsibilities. However, this position oversees project teams of five to ten engineers, and is responsible for providing performance feedback to the direct manager(s).

Profile

Competencies

• Collaboration
• Time management
• Communication and stakeholder management proficiency
• Decision making, effective meetings
• Project change control and costing management
• Leadership and excellent teamwork capabilities

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in technical discipline
• Minimum five years’ demonstrated experience as a Program Manager
• Experience working with hardware, and mechanical and/or electrical engineering teams (for products such as satellites, aircraft components or systems, consumer electronics, automotive, medical devices, etc.)
• Experience managing multi-disciplinary teams of engineers

Desired Qualifications

• Top Secret or Top Secret/SCI Security Clearance.
• Scrum or agile hardware development.
• Experience managing Jira and Confluence.
• Aerospace background is a plus.
• PMP certification or equivalent.
• Experience working as a subcontractor, and/or working with customers.
• Experience with manufacturing/production environment, and ensuring quality in aerospace or other high reliability industry.
• Experience working on diverse range of TRL (technology readiness level) products, i.e. experience with both emerging technologies with low-TRL and those with higher TRL level such as products already in production or near production.
• Experience with proposal leadership or support.
• Experience working with DoD and/or in research environment.
• Experience in small company, start-up, or growth transition environments.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.  Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to stand, walk, use hands, and reach with hands and arms. Intermittent physical activity including bending, reaching, pushing, pulling, or lifting up to 40 lbs. May encounter prolonged periods of sitting.

Expected Hours of Work

This is a full-time position requiring a minimum of 40 hours per week.

Travel

Some travel (less than two weeks per year) expected for this position.

Work Authorization/Security Clearance

ITAR Requirements: This position requires special security screenings to conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, which may include the ability to obtain a U.S. Security Clearance. The U.S. Government requires U.S. Citizenship only.