Technical Project Manager

Black Swift's aircraft fly straight into Category 5 hurricanes to gather data nobody else can get. As Technical Project Manager, you're the calm at the center of that storm, keeping schedules, teams, and priorities moving smoothly
Black Swift Technologies

Black Swift Technologies builds unmanned aircraft systems for the most demanding flight environments on Earth. Founded in 2011 in Boulder, Colorado, and born out of research flying into tornadic supercell thunderstorms, BST designs its aircraft, avionics, autonomy software, payloads, and ground control systems entirely in house. That level of vertical integration lets a small, senior team field capabilities most organizations only prototype.
At the core of every aircraft is SwiftCore, our flight management system developed from the ground up rather than assembled around an off the shelf autopilot. Owning the entire stack is why our systems survive conditions that ground everyone else, and why our engineers can innovate at any layer of the aircraft.
BST is now scaling from a research driven engineering firm into a production supplier of autonomous aircraft for environmental sensing and defense missions, expanding our platform family with the S3, building toward NDAA compliant sourcing and Blue UAS listing, and growing rapidly with the backing of our strategic partner KrateoSky.
What You Will Do

As Black Swift's first Technical Project Manager, you'll build and run the program management function from scratch, owning execution across multiple concurrent hardware and software efforts from kickoff through closeout. Partnering closely with the CTO and technical leads, you'll translate high-level roadmap objectives into structured epics, stories, tasks, dependencies, and review cadences that keep teams aligned and moving, while driving status reporting, certification and flight-readiness coordination, and clear communication across the board.
Responsibilities:

Develop project and program plans, support proposal inputs, and establish execution baselines for scope, schedule, milestones, and deliverables from program start through closeout.
Introduce Agile fundamentals to a team adopting them for the first time, tailoring ceremonies like planning, review, and retros to fit the team's size and cadence.
Reinforce blameless reporting and continuous improvement, and remove blockers to keep administrative drag low.
Drive day-to-day program execution across kickoff, technical milestones, customer reviews, and closeout; maintain schedule integrity, surface slips early, and coordinate recovery actions when needed.
Own the health, structure, and consistency of program tooling in Asana, ensuring tasks, owners, due dates, dependencies, and status signals remain current and decision-useful.
Maintain the RIO register, drive mitigation planning, and use flow metrics and first-principles analysis to identify emerging execution risks before they impact delivery, certification, or flight readiness.
Draft status reports, deliverable documentation, and review materials; lead internal and customer meetings with clear communication on progress, tradeoffs, risks, and next actions.
Coordinate schedules, documentation, submissions, and stakeholder actions required for certification activity and flight-permission efforts, working across engineering, operations, and external parties to keep approvals on track.
Produce and maintain planning assumptions, meeting outputs, lessons learned, closeout documentation, and deliverable packages with a high standard of completeness, traceability, and accuracy.
Work across engineering, flight operations, product, and customer stakeholders to synchronize priorities, resolve dependencies, and align technical execution with business commitments.
Apply AI and automation tools to improve ticket drafting, reporting, documentation quality, workflow efficiency, and decision speed, with a clear bias toward eliminating repetitive manual work.
Who You Are

The ideal candidate is a player-coach who thrives on owning outcomes in small company or startup environments, with a track record of full-cycle project delivery. You bring formal Agile training paired with the judgment to introduce it thoughtfully to a team encountering it for the first time. Working with engineers on technical tradeoffs feels as natural as reporting status to a customer. You have high EQ, competence that speaks for itself, and a bias toward practical execution over rigid process.
Qualifications:

5+ years of experience in technical project management, program management, agile delivery, Scrum Master, or related execution roles in engineering-led environments.
Demonstrated success managing complex cross-functional work from kickoff through closeout in hardware, software, robotics, aerospace, industrial, or government-contracted programs.
Experience translating technical strategy or product roadmaps into executable backlog structures, sprint plans, milestones, and day-to-day tasking.
Formal training in Agile and Scrum practices.
Excellent facilitation, organization, scheduling, and stakeholder communication skills, with the ability to influence outcomes without formal authority.
Comfort operating in technical environments and partnering closely with engineers and technical leaders on planning, tradeoffs, execution risks, and delivery decisions.
Experience with project and work-management tooling such as Asana, Jira, or equivalent, including maintenance of work in progress (WIP) boards, dependencies, reporting, and status visibility.
Strong written communication skills, including status reporting, review materials, deliverable documentation, and customer-facing program communications.
Practical proficiency using AI and automation tools.
Background in UAS, aerospace, defense, robotics, or other regulated, mission-critical industries, including SBIR/STTR or government-funded R&D work preferred.
Ability to travel up to 25% of the time.
Due to the nature of this role and the work performed, candidates must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance, as required for the position.
Benefits

Salary range of $110 - $140k
100% paid healthcare benefits
401(k)
Flexible / Unlimited PTO
Free Eldora ski pass, plus flexible mornings on 6"+ powder days

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