Staff Technical Program Manager, Software

Job Title

Staff Technical Program Manager, Software

Role Summary

Own execution across the software organization to ensure firmware, compilers, runtime, and tooling are ready ahead of silicon and optics. Run agile ceremonies, produce forward-looking forecasts, surface program risks, and drive them to closure while coordinating with engineering and executive leadership.

This role protects and extends the software lead over hardware delivery to de-risk hardware milestones and enable an agile cadence.

Experience Level

Senior — typically requires 8+ years of technical program management experience.

Responsibilities

Manage program execution and cross-functional coordination to keep software delivery ahead of hardware availability.

• Operate SCRUM within a hybrid scrum-fall structure and keep software delivery ahead of hardware gating.
• Build and maintain forward-looking completion forecasts with explicit confidence levels and stated assumptions.
• Run agile ceremonies and maintain planning artifacts and reporting that engineers trust and leadership can act on.
• Track the software lead relative to hardware and treat any erosion as a first-order program risk.
• Identify, quantify, and escalate schedule and technical risk early; drive issues to resolution with named owners and dates.
• Manage cross-team dependencies across software, hardware, and cloud and make the critical path visible.
• Work directly with chief engineers and executive management to ensure commitments map to team capacity.
• Drive scope and sequencing decisions when hardware milestones shift and clearly communicate downstream impacts.
• Advocate for increasing agile practices where software lead permits and build evidence to support changes.

Requirements

Must-have skills and experience for immediate impact.

• 8+ years of professional technical program management experience.
• Program management experience at a semiconductor, systems, or hardware company where software ships alongside physical products.
• Demonstrated experience deploying SCRUM in a hybrid scrum-fall environment aligning agile software with waterfall hardware milestones.
• Familiarity with compiler, runtime, or firmware development programs; cloud development/deployment is a plus.
• Proven track record producing forward-looking forecasts of completion and risk and running effective agile ceremonies.
• Hands-on proficiency with engineering planning and tracking tools (Jira, Linear, or equivalent), including configuring workflows and building trusted reporting.
• Ability to engage credibly with engineers on technical details and translate that detail into program-level decisions.
• Ability to absorb complex architectures quickly and contribute effectively in design reviews across unfamiliar technical areas.
• Preferred: experience managing programs through tape-out, bring-up, or comparable hard-date engineering milestones; experience leveraging AI for large-scale program management.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's degree in an engineering or scientific discipline required. Preferred fields: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Electrical Engineering. Master's degree or MBA is preferred. Formal certification or training in Scrum or SAFe is a plus.

About the Company

Company: Neurophos

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California, United States

Startup developing silicon-photonic AI accelerator chips that use programmable metasurfaces and dense optical cells to perform matrix multiplications at the speed of light, targeting large-scale AI inference with much higher energy efficiency and performance than traditional electronic approaches.