Staff/Sr Staff Technical Program Manager, Hardware Systems

Job Title

Staff/Sr Staff Technical Program Manager, Hardware Systems

Role Summary

Drive program execution for the Hardware Systems team across electrical, mechanical, and system engineering from design through production. Own integrated schedules, resource planning, cross-functional alignment, and the team's interface with suppliers and contract manufacturers.

This is a hands-on role requiring strong program management fundamentals and practical hardware engineering familiarity to keep concurrent engineering programs on track.

Experience Level

Senior — typically requires 5+ years of program management experience in hardware engineering, including exposure to electrical and mechanical development cycles.

Responsibilities

Manage program planning, cross-team coordination, and supplier engagement across the hardware development lifecycle.

• Maintain integrated schedules across concurrent projects; surface and resolve priority conflicts and resource contention.
• Facilitate cross-functional alignment: set agendas, run meetings, capture decisions, and drive action-item closure.
• Manage team capacity and resource loading; partner with engineering leads on trade-offs and allocation decisions.
• Build and maintain schedules that reflect hardware milestones and NPI phases (EVT/DVT/PVT, bring-up, production handoffs).
• Own scope for internal engineering assets (tester boards, lab fixtures, calibration equipment, demos, tooling).
• Coordinate material flow: track component orders, PCB fab runs, PCBA and mechanical assemblies, and engineering samples.
• Serve as primary program interface to contract manufacturers, PCB and sheet metal fabricators, and assembly houses.
• Represent the HW Systems team in company-wide program reviews and cross-functional planning cadences.
• Track HW Systems budgets for prototypes, tooling, and engineering activities; coordinate with finance and operations.
• Establish and maintain lightweight program processes: status reporting, risk registers, dependency tracking, and decision logs.

Requirements

Must-have skills, technologies, and behaviors required to perform the role.

• 5+ years program management experience in hardware engineering with direct exposure to electrical and mechanical cycles.
• Deep familiarity with hardware development terminology and processes across PCBA, PCB fabrication, mechanical enclosures, system integration, bring-up, EVT/DVT/PVT, and production.
• Proven experience coordinating with contract manufacturers (CMs) and ODMs to manage schedules, deliverables, and issue resolution.
• Hands-on experience with material flow, component tracking, and BOM management.
• Skilled facilitator and strong written/verbal communicator; comfortable presenting status and risks to engineering leads and executives.
• Experienced with project management tools such as Microsoft Project, Jira, Smartsheet, or equivalent.
• Ability to replan and realign quickly when scope or schedules change; strong bias for action and follow-through.
• Experience tracking program-level budgets and coordinating with finance/operations for spend alignment.
• Willingness and capacity to comply with U.S. export control laws and related program constraints.

Preferred:

• Experience defining and improving program management processes in a startup or new business unit.
• Experience managing programs for complex, multi-disciplinary hardware development efforts.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical field.

About the Company

Company: Lightmatter

Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Lightmatter develops photonic AI data-center infrastructure and optical chips for extreme-scale AI and HPC. The company invented the Passage 3D‑stacked photonics engine to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects across large-scale processors and raised $400M in Series D financing at a reported $4.4B valuation.