Director, Engineering Program Manager

Type: Full-time(Perm)

Location: Fremont, CA (Onsite)

About The Role

We are seeking a highly organized and results-driven Director, Engineering Program Management to lead the planning, coordination, and execution of engineering development builds, testing activities, and experimental programs. This role serves as the central point of coordination across engineering teams, ensuring prototype builds, validation testing, and data collection activities are executed on schedule and aligned with program objectives.

The ideal candidate is an exceptional communicator with strong project management skills who can organize complex engineering activities, track progress across multiple workstreams, and hold cross-functional teams accountable for meeting milestones, deliverables, and program commitments.

What You’ll Own

• Develop, maintain, and communicate integrated project schedules for engineering development builds, testing, and validation activities.
• Coordinate engineering builds across multiple teams, ensuring materials, resources, documentation, and dependencies are aligned for successful execution.
• Plan and manage engineering test schedules, balancing priorities, resource availability, and program timelines.
• Track configurations, build revisions, hardware/software versions, and engineering change status to ensure accurate configuration management throughout development.
• Coordinate sub-assembly, product and system-level testing activities while minimizing schedule conflicts and maximizing engineering efficiency.
• Coordinate test data collection, organization and ensuring results are complete, traceable, and available for review.
• Develop dashboards, status reports, and executive summaries that communicate project progress, test status, risks, issues, and key performance metrics.
• Facilitate regular project meetings, build readiness reviews, test readiness reviews, and milestone reviews.
• Monitor project risks, identify schedule impacts, and proactively drive mitigation plans.
• Hold engineering teams and functional managers accountable for meeting project milestones, action items, and deliverables.
• Follow up on open issues and ensure timely resolution of blockers affecting project execution.
• Ensure effective coordination of engineering builds, test activities, and cross-functional dependencies across engineering, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain.
• Enable engineering to operate effectively by driving clarity on priorities, decisions, and accountability.
• Support continuous improvement of project management processes, reporting methods, and engineering execution practices.
• Identify gaps in organizational structure, processes, and cross-functional alignment, and drive improvements.

What You Bring

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Project Management, or a related technical field.
• 15+ years of project management or engineering program coordination experience including experience in an early-stage start-up technical environment.
• Experience managing engineering development projects involving prototype builds, testing, and validation.
• Strong understanding of engineering development processes and product lifecycle management.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple concurrent projects.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive accountability without direct authority.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including executive-level reporting.
• Proficiency with project management tools such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Jira, Azure DevOps, or similar platforms.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint for project definition, tracking and reporting.

Preferred

• Master’s degree in engineering, Project Management or related technical field.
• Experience in aerospace, automotive, robotics, consumer electronics, industrial equipment, or other complex engineering environments.
• Familiarity with engineering change management (ECN/ECO) processes and configuration management.
• Demonstrated success in managing engineering development projects in an ambiguous and nascent product environment.
• Experience with product lifecycle management (PLM) systems.
• PMP, CAPM, Agile, or other project management certification.

Desired Skills

• Excellent planning and scheduling abilities
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced engineering environment
• Detail-oriented with exceptional organizational skills
• Strong leadership and facilitation skills
• Ability to influence stakeholders at all organizational levels