Program Manager

Responsibilities

• Own the program cost, schedule, and technical baseline from contract award through final delivery and on-orbit acceptance; maintain program control in a manner that supports customer reporting requirements and internal investment decisions.
• Serve as the primary customer-facing point of contact for program status, milestone achievement, deliverable submittals, contract modifications, and issue resolution.
• Lead integrated program reviews, technical interchange meetings, preliminary and critical design reviews, system integration reviews, and program milestone events with internal and external stakeholders.
• Build, maintain, and actively manage an Integrated Master Schedule that reflects realistic critical-path dependencies across hardware design, fabrication, test, integration, launch, and operations phases.
• Establish and manage program budgets, allocate resources across engineering and operations functions, track actuals against plan, and maintain accurate earned value or equivalent cost performance data.
• Identify, quantify, and actively manage program risk; maintain a living risk register, assign mitigation owners, and escalate issues that cannot be resolved within the program team.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, or a related technical discipline; master's degree preferred. Equivalent experience in lieu of advanced degree will be considered for candidates with a strong space program management record.
• 8 to 14 years of progressive responsibility in space systems program management, systems engineering, or technical leadership, with at least 4 years as a program manager or deputy program manager on a space hardware program.
• Demonstrated experience managing the full lifecycle of a space hardware program from PDR through delivery or on-orbit commissioning, including customer interface, milestone execution, cost and schedule management, and deliverable accountability.
• Proficiency in integrated master scheduling, critical path analysis, earned value management or equivalent cost performance methods, and risk register maintenance.
• Hands-on familiarity with space system architectures including spacecraft bus, payload, ground systems, launch vehicle integration, and operations planning sufficient to hold technical teams accountable.
• Demonstrated ability to manage customer relationships through both routine status reporting and high-stakes technical or contractual issues.
• Experience managing government or commercial contracts, including FAR/DFARS familiarity, contract modification processes, data rights considerations, and deliverable compliance.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to prepare and deliver formal program reviews, executive briefings, and written reports to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Applicants should be eligible for a U.S. government security clearance if required.