Program Manager

What you’ll do

We're looking for a Supply Chain Program Manager to sit at the center of our biggest, most complex programs and own them end to end: from the moment a design leaves engineering to the moment a unit ships and clears the customer's timeline.

This is not a coordination role. This is a single-threaded-owner role. You are the source of truth for program status, the person who knows exactly where every program stands at any moment, and the person who makes sure it doesn't stall — regardless of which function is holding the ball. If materials are missing, you know why and what's being done. If a design change lands, you know what it touches and who needs to move. If a supplier slips, you're already on the call. You report facts, not vibes, and you close gaps before they become headlines.

We're looking for someone who has operated in high-velocity, high-consequence manufacturing environments where the standard is total ownership, relentless attention to detail, and the willingness to personally chase down whatever is blocking the program.

Where you’ll work

We are an in-office culture — velocity matters when you're building physical infrastructure, and the best decisions happen in the room. This role is ideally based in our San Francisco, Long Beach, or Houston offices, with full-time onsite expectations outside of bi-weekly WFH Fridays.

That said, we will make exceptions for truly exceptional talent if you live outside one of our hubs. If you're the right person for this role, we'll have a conversation about what works.

Responsibilities

Program Leadership, End to End

• You are the single point of accountability and you own the full program lifecycle for assigned programs — from design freeze through materials procurement, production, quality release, and shipment to the customer.
• Build and maintain master program schedules (Gantt-based) integrating design milestones, procurement lead times, production slots, quality gates, and shipping/logistics — and keep them alive, not static slideware.
• Run the cadence: daily/weekly program stand-ups, cross-functional syncs, and executive-level status reporting, tailored to the audience but always grounded in the same source of truth.

Cross-Functional Orchestration

• Sit at the intersection of materials, procurement, engineering/design changes, production scheduling, quality, logistics, and customer-facing timelines — and actively drive each function toward the program's critical path, not just track what they report.
• Translate design changes into real operational impact in hours, not days: what does this ECN do to the BOM, the schedule, the supplier commitments, existing inventory, and the customer date — and who needs to act right now.
• Identify the critical path continuously, not just at kickoff — re-sequence and re-prioritize as risks emerge.
• Escalate early and precisely. You're expected to know a problem is coming before the function that owns it says the words out loud.

Execution & Timeline Management

• Push urgency into every sub-function without owning their day-to-day work — you hold people to commitments, you don't do their job for them.
• Drive material readiness, procurement PO status, and production slotting toward the customer commit date; flag and resolve conflicts between programs competing for the same constrained resources (capacity, long-lead components, engineering bandwidth).
• Own risk management for the program: maintain a live risk register, quantify schedule/cost exposure, and drive mitigation — not just track that a risk "exists."

Customer & Stakeholder Management

• Own the customer-facing delivery timeline and be the internal owner of what it will take to hit it — including saying "no" or "not by that date" with a credible alternative when needed.
• Interface directly with customers on program status where required, translating internal complexity into a clear, confident external narrative.
• Represent the program to executive leadership with concise, accurate, no-spin updates — you bring the real picture, including bad news, before it's asked for.

Negotiation & Influence

• Negotiate priority, resources, and trade-offs across functions that don't report to you — procurement, engineering, production, quality, logistics — using data and relationships, not authority.
• Resolve competing priorities between programs and functions by bringing facts, options, and a recommendation, not just an escalation.
• Work directly with suppliers and contract manufacturers when a program-critical issue requires it, in coordination with procurement.

Requirements

• automotive, aerospace, or industrial equipment — ideally with direct exposure to hardware NPI or high-mix, high-complexity production environments.
• Track record of owning complex, multi-function programs end to end in a fast-moving, high-consequence environment.
• Deep comfort with the mechanics of a BOM, engineering change process, procurement lead times, and production scheduling — you don't need this explained to you twice.
• Demonstrated ability to build and run master program schedules (MS Project, Smartsheet, or equivalent Gantt tooling) that people actually use to make decisions.
• Strong technical fluency — able to read a drawing, understand a BOM, and have a credible conversation with engineering, quality, and manufacturing without a translator.
• Proven negotiator — someone who gets functional leaders to move without formal authority over them, through credibility, data, and relentless follow-through.
• High agency by default: you find the answer, you don't wait for it to be handed to you. You chase down the missing piece of information rather than reporting that it's missing.
• Obsessive attention to detail combined with the judgment to know which details actually matter to the timeline.
• Comfortable operating with imperfect information and lean support — this is a startup-paced environment inside a scaling industrial company, not a mature PMO.
• Willingness to travel internationally (China, Mexico) as programs require.