Program Manager, Hardware & Packaging

Tin Can

$90K — $120K *
Telecommunications & Hardware
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 3+ years in program/project management with hardware-focused experience
  • Understanding of mechanical, electrical, and software/firmware disciplines
  • Strong familiarity with project management software
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
  • Ability to handle deadline pressure and manage conflicts effectively
  • Passion for the mission and products being developed

Responsibilities

  • Build and maintain comprehensive program timelines for multiple departments
  • Conduct regular status meetings and cross-functional syncs to ensure accountability
  • Identify and mitigate risks and dependencies proactively
  • Oversee the critical path from prototype to mass production and ensure launch readiness
  • Manage packaging development alongside hardware timelines
  • Translate ambiguous timelines into clear, actionable plans
  • Maintain thorough documentation and communication of project status
  • Flag potential tradeoffs and risks to leadership with clear options

Benefits

  • Collaborative team environment
  • Opportunities for professional development
  • Engagement in innovative product development
  • Exposure to cross-functional teams and tasks
Full Job Description
The Role

Every Tin Can that goes out the door - the phone, the packaging, the paper inserts inside the box - passes through at least six different departments before it's magical enough to plug in. We're looking for a Hardware Program Manager to make sure we're all executing to the same deadlines and no one is left wondering where the bottleneck came from.

You'll own program management end to end, keeping design, software, firmware, electrical, mechanical, legal, supply chain, manufacturing, marketing, and fulfillment moving in sync - from early concept through mass production and customer delivery. You won't be the person executing the work yourself, but you'll be the person who knows exactly where every workstream stands, what's blocking what, and what needs to happen next for the whole thing to ship on time.

This is a mid-level role for someone who has run this playbook before on a physical product - not a purely digital one - and knows firsthand that a compliance miss, a tooling delay, and a marketing deadline are all the same problem wearing different hats.

What You'll Do
  • Build and maintain master program timelines that connect design, software, firmware, electrical, mechanical, legal, supply chain, manufacturing, marketing, and fulfillment milestones into one coherent picture
  • Run the cadence - status meetings, cross-functional syncs, executive updates - that keeps every department honest about where things actually stand
  • See around the corner - Spot dependencies and risks before they become delays (a connector spec change here, supplier fallout there, a change to certification) and drive resolution across teams
  • Own the critical path from POC through mass production, and coordinate launch-readiness with marketing and fulfillment teams
  • Manage packaging development timelines alongside hardware, since a phone that ships in the wrong box is still a phone that doesn't ship
  • Translate ambiguity into clear plans - turning "we think we'll be ready sometime in Q3" into an actual dated, owned plan
  • Keep documentation, timelines, and decision logs in a state where anyone on the team can see what's happening without a meeting
  • Flag scope, cost, or schedule tradeoffs to leadership clearly and early, with options attached
What You Bring
  • Minimum 3 years of program or project management experience, with real, hands-on time managing hardware or electrical/consumer appliance products from concept to shipped product
  • Comfort working across mechanical, electrical, and software/firmware disciplines - you don't need to design the PCBA, but you need to understand why it's late
  • Strong point of view on project management software
  • Excellent written and verbal communication - you can brief an engineer and a marketing lead on the same status in language each of them actually wants to hear
  • A calm, organized presence under real deadline pressure, and the backbone to push back on a date that isn't real
  • Genuine enthusiasm for what we're building - the mission should mean something to you
Nice to Haves
  • Experience launching a physical consumer product that also had a connected/software component (hardware-plus-app or hardware-plus-subscription)
  • Experience working at a startup or small team where "that's not my job" isn't really a sentence anyone says


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