Principal Program Manager

RF Ideas

Schaumburg, IL

Major Areas of Responsibility / Essential Functions

Own end-to-end delivery of a portfolio of concurrent, high-complexity programs, aligning scope, schedule, cost, and quality with organizational strategy.
Establish and continuously champion program management standards, tools, and governance across the organization.
Serve as the primary program-level interface to executive leadership, translating program status, risk, and trade-offs into clear business decisions.
Lead cross-functional teams (engineering, product management, quality, operations, supply chain, and marketing) without formal authority, driving accountability and alignment.

Specific Responsibilities

Build and maintain integrated master schedules across hardware, firmware, and software workstreams, modeling scenarios and stress-testing critical paths.
Lead proactive risk management: identify, quantify, and mitigate program risk, flagging emerging issues before they impact delivery.
Conduct resource capacity planning and demand forecasting across the program portfolio to anticipate bottlenecks.
Own program financials: budget, cost tracking, and forecast-to-actual variance reporting.
Allocate resources, budget, and hours across the program portfolio, and proactively adjust allocations as priorities, risks, or constraints shift.
Drive structured after-action reviews and retrospectives; convert lessons learned into process improvements and playbooks.
Translate product and business requirements into detailed, phase-gated implementation plans.
Track, evaluate, and communicate the impact of program-level changes, maintaining a clear decision and change log for stakeholders.
Prepare status reports, executive summaries, meeting notes, and program documentation, using AI tools to accelerate drafting where helpful, with sound judgment on review and accuracy before distribution.
Evaluate and pilot new program and project management tools, capabilities, and workflows; recommend adoption where they create measurable efficiency or quality gains.

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

Exceptional communication, organization, and executive-level documentation skills; able to distill complex, multi-workstream programs into clear narratives for senior leadership.
Demonstrated strategic leadership, sound judgment, and interpersonal influence across all levels of the organization, including without direct authority.
Proven ability to operate effectively in a fast-changing, ambiguous environment and to bring structure to complexity.
Strong working fluency with AI-enabled productivity tools and a demonstrated track record of applying them to improve program outcomes.
Comfort using data and analytics to drive proactive rather than reactive program management.
Positively influences managers, peers, cross-functional teams, vendors, and customers; skilled at building consensus among competing priorities.
Deep commitment to quality and to internal and external customer outcomes.
Advanced proficiency in modern program/project management platforms (e.g., Atlassian, Monday.com, Microsoft Project or equivalent) and collaboration tools.
Able to operate with a high degree of autonomy and minimal direct supervision, while keeping stakeholders appropriately informed.
Curiosity and adaptability toward emerging tools and ways of working, with a bias toward experimentation balanced by rigorous risk and quality review.

Education and Experience

Bachelor's degree required (engineering or related technical field strongly preferred; advanced degree a plus).
Typically requires ten or more years of related experience, including significant experience leading complex new-product development programs and managing multiple concurrent, high-complexity programs at a portfolio level
Project Management Certification (PMP) or Agile/SAFe certification a plus.

Physical Demands

None specified.

Work Environment

Hybrid — 3 days onsite in Schaumburg, IL, 2 days WFH.

Behavioral Assessment

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Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

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For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.

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Vacancy posted 3 days ago

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