Director, Customer Program Management

About the role

The Director of Customer Program Management is responsible for leading the execution of strategic customer programs across the FDX product portfolio. This individual serves as the primary customer-facing program leader, ensuring technical deliverables, qualification milestones, manufacturing readiness, and customer commitments are achieved on schedule.

Essential Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary program management interface for strategic FDX customers.
• Build trusted relationships with customer engineering, program management, operations, and procurement teams.
• Lead customer program reviews, milestone tracking, risk assessments, and execution checkpoints.
• Ensure customers receive timely and accurate updates regarding technical deliverables, qualification status, production readiness, and delivery commitments.
• Act as the voice of the customer within GF to ensure priorities and requirements are properly understood and executed.
• Own end-to-end execution of customer programs from design enablement through qualification, production ramp, and high-volume manufacturing.
• Develop and maintain integrated program schedules, critical milestones, dependencies, and risk mitigation plans.
• Drive accountability across cross-functional teams to ensure commitments are delivered on time.
• Lead issue resolution efforts and recovery plans when program objectives are at risk.
• Establish governance mechanisms to proactively identify and manage execution risks.
• Partner closely with Sales and Account Management teams to maintain a thorough understanding of customer priorities, technical requirements, schedules, and delivery expectations.
• Translate customer needs and commitments into actionable execution plans across GF organizations.
• Provide program status, risk assessments, and recovery plans to account teams to support customer engagement activities.
• Participate in customer reviews, technical discussions, and escalation meetings as the FDX execution lead.
• Support strategic customer engagements by ensuring alignment between customer expectations and internal execution plans.
• Drive execution of customer qualification plans, production ramps, and manufacturing readiness activities.
• Coordinate with Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, and Operations teams to ensure customer commitments are met.
• Proactively identify and address risks related to yield, capacity, cycle time, quality, qualification, and logistics.
• Lead cross-functional efforts to resolve customer-impacting issues and minimize schedule disruptions.
• Ensure operational readiness for key customer milestones and product transitions.
• Prepare and deliver concise executive-level status updates and decision packages.
• Lead customer and internal escalations through structured problem-solving and recovery plans.
• Drive timely decision-making among technical and operational stakeholders.
• Communicate complex issues clearly while maintaining customer confidence and trust.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Materials Science, Physics, or related technical discipline.
• 15+ years of semiconductor industry experience.
• 10+ years of experience in program management, customer engineering, operations, product engineering, NPI, or related customer-facing leadership roles.
• Demonstrated success managing complex semiconductor programs from development through production.
• Deep understanding of semiconductor product development, qualification, manufacturing operations, and supply chain processes.
• Proven ability to influence and lead cross-functional teams without direct authority.
• Strong customer-facing experience and executive communication skills.
• Experience managing customer escalations and driving issue resolution in a fast-paced environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience within a semiconductor foundry, IDM, or fabless semiconductor company.
• Knowledge of FD-SOI technologies, RF solutions, embedded memory technologies, or advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes.
• Experience supporting automotive, industrial, wireless, IoT, or edge AI customers.
• PMP or equivalent program management certification.
• Experience working with global customers and cross-functional teams across multiple geographies.