Senior Hardware/Software Technical Program Manager

About the role

Fresh Consulting is a design‑led software development and hardware engineering firm that partners with a space company to deliver end‑to‑end digital services. The company is seeking a Technical Program Manager to drive cross‑functional delivery of its Orbital Compute platform – a secure, orchestrated edge‑to‑orbit compute system that combines radiation‑tolerant payloads with a Linux‑ and Rust‑based software stack running NVIDIA‑accelerated AI/ML workloads. The role reports to the Chief Technology Officer and will own program planning and execution across hardware, software, security, and systems teams.

Location: Houston, TX (on‑site three weeks per month for remote candidates). Contract to start with potential conversion to full‑time based on performance. Candidates must be U.S. persons due to ITAR regulations.

Responsibilities

• Own end‑to‑end delivery of cross‑functional programs for the Orbital Compute platform, from inception through on‑orbit deployment.
• Coordinate delivery across engineering groups of ten or more, aligning teams that are not directly managed to a shared plan, roadmap, and milestones.
• Build and maintain integrated program plans covering scope, schedule, dependencies, critical path, and resourcing across parallel hardware and software workstreams.
• Proactively assess risks, anticipate bottlenecks, navigate trade‑offs, and unblock delivery; drive issues and escalations to resolution.
• Work directly with customers, third‑party vendors, and suppliers to deliver integrated solutions, managing external dependencies and integration milestones.
• Own program status communication: provide clear summaries of progress, risk, and decisions to engineering leadership and executives; run operating cadence of reviews and planning.
• Read and reason about system‑level technical design; hold credible technical trade‑off discussions with senior engineers across Linux, Rust, NVIDIA, and AI/ML stacks.
• Partner with engineering leads to scope efforts, set priorities, coordinate release schedules, and build business cases for prioritization and investment decisions.
• Build and improve sustainable delivery processes that accelerate execution, reduce cost, and raise quality.
• Maintain clear, accurate technical and program documentation.
• Deliver iteratively in a fast‑paced environment with significant ambiguity.
• Perform additional duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical/quantitative discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of technical program management experience working directly with software engineering teams.
• Hands‑on software development background sufficient to read design documents and reason about distributed systems, service architectures, APIs, and the software development lifecycle.
• Demonstrated experience managing cross‑functional programs, building processes, and coordinating release schedules across multiple engineering teams.
• Strong project‑management disciplines: scope, schedule, budget, quality, risk, and critical‑path management.
• Track record of leading delivery across engineering groups of ten or more.
• Experience working directly with customers and third‑party vendors to deliver integrated solutions.
• Experience delivering integrated hardware‑and‑software products (hardware/software co‑delivery, embedded, edge, or space systems) strongly preferred.
• Technical fluency with Linux, Rust, the NVIDIA software stack (CUDA/GPU), and AI/ML workloads preferred.
• Experience with Agile/Scrum and modern program‑tracking and CI/CD tooling.
• Experience delivering in regulated, secure, or export‑controlled environments (ITAR/EAR); an active or prior U.S. Government security clearance is a plus.
• Proven ability to make things happen in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments.
• Strong judgment, problem‑solving skills, and organization to meet tight deadlines with high‑quality results.
• Passion for space, entrepreneurial mindset, high EQ, and ability to collaborate cross‑functionally.
• Ability to influence without authority and drive cross‑functional teams to deliver.

Benefits

• Employee benefits at 100% including medical coverage.
• PTO and holiday pay.
• 401(k) plan.
• Other benefits as offered by Fresh Consulting.

Compensation

Salary range: $170,000 – $200,000, determined by location, level, job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Schedule

Minimum 40 hours per week. On‑site presence required in Houston three weeks per month for remote candidates.