Technical Program Manager

Technical Program Manager-Physical AITechnical Program Manager-Physical AI Contract Boston,MA /Redmond,WAAbout the Team:Building a physical AI team from scratch means a lot of moving parts — engineering workstreams, lab readiness activities, hardware build cycles, test campaigns, and a set of dependencies that can cascade fast if they're not actively managed. That's where this role comes in. We need a TPM who is genuinely technical — someone who can sit in a hardware design review and understand what they're hearing, ask the right questions, and translate complex technical status into clear program-level decisions and risks. This isn't a coordination role dressed up as a TPM position. It's a role for someone who's comfortable operating in ambiguity, who knows how to build structure where none exists, and who can drive alignment across a team that's moving fast in multiple directions at once.What You'll Be Doing:Program Planning & ExecutionOwn the integrated program plan for the Boston physical AI team — covering hardware builds, lab operations, validation campaigns, and engineering milestones. Maintain and actively manage a living dependency map across onsite and remote engineering teams; identify risks before they become schedule impacts. Establish and drive program cadences — sprint planning, milestone reviews, risk reviews, and crossteam syncs — that keep the organization aligned without adding unnecessary overhead. Track open action items, decisions, and commitments across workstreams; own follow-through and hold teams accountable to their commitments.Risk & Decision ManagementProactively surface technical, schedule, and resource risks; develop and drive mitigation strategies rather than just flagging problems. Distinguish between decisions that need leadership visibility and those that can and should be resolved at the team level; create the right escalation pathways. Build and maintain program dashboards that give leadership accurate, real-time visibility into status, risks, and blockers — without requiring manual data collection from engineers. Facilitate tradeoff discussions when priorities conflict — bringing the right people into the room, structuring the decision, and ensuring clear outcomes are documented.Cross-Team AlignmentServe as the connective tissue between onsite lab and engineering teams and broader organizational stakeholders — translating technical status into program language and vice versa. Own communication of program status, risks, and decisions to engineering leadership on a regular and ad-hoc basis. Coordinate with external teams — supply chain, facilities, IT, partner engineering organizations — to resolve dependencies that sit outside the immediate team boundary. Manage scope changes, new requests, and shifting priorities in a structured way that maintains clarity on what's in-plan and what's not.Process & ToolingBuild lightweight but effective program management processes appropriate for a fast-moving R&D environment — not enterprise overhead, but enough structure to prevent chaos. Own tooling decisions for program tracking (e.g., Jira, Confluence, Asana, or similar) and drive adoption across the team. Author clear RACI frameworks for key workstreams to eliminate ambiguity about who owns what.What We're Looking For:RequiredBachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field. 7+ years of technical program management experience, with at least 3 years managing programs that involve hardware development, physical systems, or robotics. Strong technical foundation — enough depth to understand hardware build processes, test and validation workflows, and engineering dependencies without needing every concept explained. Demonstrable track record of managing complex, multi-workstream programs in ambiguous or greenfield environments — not just running established processes. Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to write a sharp status update, a clean risk register, and a clear decision memo without much editing. Experience building program management infrastructure (processes, tools, cadences) from scratch.PreferredExperience in a physical AI, robotics, autonomous systems, or advanced hardware R&D organization. Exposure to hardware development lifecycles — NPI, prototype builds, DVT/EVT/PVT, or equivalent — and the specific dependencies and failure modes that come with them. Familiarity with agile methodologies adapted for hardware development environments. Prior experience at a hyperscaler, frontier AI lab, or high-growth technology company where ambiguity and speed are the norm, not the exception.A Day in the LifeThe morning starts with a quick scan of the program dashboard — two items from yesterday's hardware build session are still open, and one of them has an upstream dependency on a component delivery that's now pushed by a week. You update the risk register, draft a short note to the engineering lead flagging the impact on the integration timeline, and propose two mitigation options before you've finished your coffee. By midmorning you're running the weekly cross-team sync, walking through milestone status with the lab manager and tech lead, and facilitating a pointed conversation between the hardware and software teams about a shared interface spec that's been in limbo. You push for a decision before the meeting ends and make sure it's documented. In the afternoon you're heads-down in the program plan, updating dependencies in light of a scope change that came in yesterday, and drafting the agenda for next week's program review. You end the day responding to a few async questions from a partner team in a different timezone — the kind of thing that, if left unanswered, turns into a blocker three days later.