Title: Senior Technical Program Manager-NPI
Duration: Direct Hire
Location: Austin, Texas - Onsite, with required travel 25% to the Florida.
Benefits: Excellent benefits available, including unlimited PTO, 401(k) match, a bonus percentage tied to role, fully reimbursed travel and expenses, unlimited e-learning through Coursera, and relocation assistance.
Role:Our client, a spatial computing company building the optics and manufacturing systems behind advanced augmented reality devices, is looking for a results-driven Senior Technical Program Manager. You'll drive New Product Introduction (NPI) and process-development programs, taking new waveguide processes from early R&D through prototyping until they are qualified, scalable and ready for mass production. The client produces surface-relief waveguides in-house on custom equipment, through many nanofabrication steps.
- Drive execution: move process-development programs from focused R&D and pathfinding, through rapid prototyping, to a scalable mass production roadmap, driving schedule, scope, and deliverables to closure
- Work closely with process, integration, and equipment engineers to translate complex technical concepts and experimental results into clear project scopes, roadmaps, and work breakdown structures
- Keep requirements, risk analysis, validation protocols and reports, and the transfer-to-manufacturing package on schedule as the process matures toward qualification for high-volume manufacturing
- Facilitate communication and strategic alignment between R&D, Process Engineering, Equipment Engineering, Quality, and High-Volume Manufacturing operations
- Proactively identify technical risks, experimental dead-ends, and readiness gaps, and develop mitigation plans to keep the qualification timeline on track
- Chair phase-gate reviews, ensuring the right technical authorities are in the room, decisions are made on time, and actions are captured and tracked to closure
- Maintain clear project tracking, dynamic dashboards, and executive reporting for portfolio health, scope changes, and budget allocation
- Stand up metrics and program mechanics that show how fast process development is moving and whether a process is ready to advance based on clear readiness criteria
Qualifications:- 5+ years of technical program or project management experience, including process-development or NPI programs in a semiconductor, MEMS, or comparable nanofabrication environment
- Experience driving delivery from development through qualification and transfer to manufacturing
- Ownership of phase gates, validation protocols, and the transfer-to-manufacturing package
- Experience shaping line design for new or future lines, including automation, specs, and data systems
- Technical breadth to engage with and challenge process, integration, equipment, and optical engineers, translating across disciplines
- Fluency with DOE, SPC, and yield data as the basis for judging when a process is ready, and holding the team to that bar
- Exceptional ability to synthesize complex, highly technical engineering updates into structured, actionable insights for executive leadership and internal operational teams
- AI-forward execution: uses modern AI tools to move faster, such as automating status synthesis and surfacing schedule and supply risks earlier
- Willing to spend frequent time on the manufacturing floor and in cleanroom environments to observe equipment, combined with a standard office environment
- Able to wear occasional PPE (safety glasses, steel-toed shoes, or cleanroom smocks) during equipment verification and documentation
Preferred Qualifications:- Process experience with diffractive or surface-relief waveguides, semiconductor, advanced lithography, or other AR/MR display optics
- A feel for how process variation propagates into optical or display performance
- Hardware systems engineering background with TPM experience taking products from concept to production
- Experience across the consumer electronics product lifecycle (semiconductor, electrical, optical, to fab/launch)
Education: Masters or Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent is desired.
Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Range is $140,000 to $160,000 USD annual base salary.
