Technical Project Manager - Systems Engineering

Classification: Full-Time Employee (W-2) – Open to Part-Time arrangements that transition to Full-Time within 6 months

Location: Melbourne, FL

Work Arrangement: In-person in Melbourne at least 4 days per week

U.S. Citizenship Required

Position Overview

Catania Product Development is seeking a Technical Project Manager with recent systems engineering experience to take direct responsibility for the successful execution of multiple complex technical projects and programs. This role requires an engineering-degreed leader who can see the broader system, connect work across disciplines, anticipate technical and programmatic risks, and drive issues to resolution before they impact project outcomes.

In addition to project leadership, this person will perform meaningful systems engineering work directly, including requirements development, interface definition, technical planning, integration strategy, and verification planning. The right candidate is highly proactive, technically credible, results-driven, and accountable for keeping teams, stakeholders, and project execution aligned.

Catania Product Development is an innovative product design and engineering services company operating in a fast-paced, high-tech, and creative environment. We offer a family-friendly atmosphere, flexible work structure, and the opportunity to take real ownership of challenging projects from concept through build, integration, and test. Our culture is built on trust, autonomy, reliability, and shared success, making it a strong fit for people who want meaningful responsibility and the ability to directly influence outcomes. Our work is especially rewarding for those who value accountability, enjoy solving hard problems, and find fulfillment in seeing products come to life from start to finish. Many of our efforts support start-ups and small-to-medium businesses, giving team members the chance to help turn ideas into real, working products across a diverse range of applications.

Core Responsibilities

Project & Program Ownership

· Own execution and outcomes across multiple concurrent technical projects and programs

· Maintain alignment across scope, schedule, technical progress, resources, risks, dependencies, customer expectations and open actions

· Ensure engineers, stakeholders, subcontractors, contractors, vendors, and other contributors understand and execute what is necessary for project success

· Drive decisions, action items, risks, and technical issues to closure while maintaining momentum across competing priorities

· Maintain clear visibility into project health, priorities, dependencies, and risks

· Rapidly context-switch between projects while retaining critical technical and programmatic detail

Systems Engineering

· Develop, refine, and manage system and subsystem requirements, including translating customer needs and use cases into clear, testable requirements

· Maintain requirements traceability through design, integration, verification, and validation activities

· Define and manage interfaces across mechanical, electrical, software, firmware, manufacturing, integration, and test functions

· Support system architecture development, functional decomposition, requirement allocation, and technical trade studies

· Identify cross-disciplinary gaps, conflicts, assumptions, dependencies, and downstream impacts before they become integration problems

· Establish practical systems engineering discipline and documentation that can scale as Catania grows

Integration, Verification & Technical Planning

· Develop verification strategies and ensure requirements have clear, appropriate methods of verification

· Coordinate integration sequencing, test readiness, acceptance criteria, and technical closure across disciplines

· Ensure issues discovered during build, integration, and test are understood at the system level and driven to appropriate resolution

· Assess requirement or design changes for impacts across interfaces, verification, schedule, cost, and downstream work

Efficiency & Problem Resolution

· Identify technical, schedule, resource, supplier, and execution risks early and establish practical mitigation or recovery plans

· Anticipate likely outcomes and second-order impacts before they become immediate problems

· Develop practical mitigation or recovery plans and engage the appropriate people quickly

· Engage and inform the right people quickly, escalating when additional authority, resources, or expertise are required

· Continuously look for opportunities to reduce risk, eliminate unnecessary work, and improve project efficiency

Customer & Stakeholder Management

· Maintain strong awareness of customer and team confidence, concerns, priorities, and overall engagement

· Recognize verbal and non-verbal cues during customer and team interactions and recognize when concerns, hesitation, disagreement, or loss of confidence that may not be stated directly

· Consider both explicit statements and unstated signals when anticipating likely project, customer, or relationship outcomes

· Proactively address emerging concerns before they become larger technical, schedule, or relationship issues

· Build trust through responsiveness, transparency, follow-through, and awareness of how project execution is being perceived by customers and the team

Technical Communication & Documentation

· Participate meaningfully in detailed technical discussions across multiple engineering disciplines

· Take clear, technically accurate notes and convert discussions into decisions, owners, actions, risks, assumptions, and due dates

· Maintain organized records of requirements, interfaces, decisions, risks, open issues, and project status

Required Qualifications

Applicant must be a US citizen.

 

Engineering & Systems Foundation

· Bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or relevant engineering discipline

· 10+ years of combined professional engineering and technical project/program leadership experience

· Recent, substantive systems engineering experience within the past 5 years

· Demonstrated experience developing and managing requirements, interfaces, verification approaches, and cross-functional technical execution

· Experience with system architecture, requirements decomposition, technical tradeoffs, integration planning, and verification/validation

· Ability to understand complex hardware or integrated systems well enough to connect decisions across engineering disciplines

Project Leadership & Execution

· Demonstrated experience owning complex technical projects or programs and taking responsibility for overall outcomes

· Proven ability to identify issues early, create a resolution plan, coordinate the right contributors, and drive problems to closure

· Strong risk-management instincts and demonstrated ability to anticipate downstream impacts

· Ability to manage multiple concurrent projects and context-switch rapidly without losing critical technical or program detail

· Experience coordinating engineers, stakeholders, subcontractors, contractors, vendors, and other external contributors

· Experience with SOWs, BOEs, BOMs, labor forecasting, and technical estimates

Communication & Work Style

· Strong interpersonal and situational awareness, with the ability to read customer and team dynamics and recognize concerns that may not be explicitly stated

· Demonstrated ability to anticipate likely outcomes by combining technical facts, project conditions, stakeholder behavior, and customer feedback

· Highly proactive; naturally identifies emerging issues, develops a path forward, and engages the appropriate people before problems escalate

· Highly proactive, results-driven, organized, and accountable

· Excellent written, verbal, and technical note-taking skills

· Strong customer and stakeholder awareness, including the ability to recognize concerns that may not be explicitly stated

· Ability to work in person from Catania's Melbourne, Florida office at least 4 days per week

Preferred Qualifications

· Bachelor's or advanced degree in Systems Engineering

· PMP certification

· Experience across a variety of industries and/or product solutions

· Experience with commercial product development

· Experience with formal requirements management tools or structured requirements databases

· Strong Microsoft Project / IMS scheduling experience

· Experience with both waterfall and agile-based development environments

· EVMS familiarity or experience

· Experience establishing or improving systems engineering processes in a growing engineering organization

Work Environment & Expectations

This role is for someone who naturally stays ahead of both the project and the system. Success depends on understanding how technical decisions interact across disciplines, identifying problems before they mature, engaging the right people quickly, and maintaining accountability for both engineering execution and overall project outcomes.

The Technical Project Manager is not expected to personally make every discipline-level design decision. They are expected to understand how those decisions affect the broader system, ensure requirements and interfaces remain aligned, drive the appropriate technical conversations, and make sure unresolved issues do not disappear between teams.

Additional Information

· Compensation structure, scope, and engagement terms will be defined in the offer or contract agreement, as applicable