Technical Project Manager

Overview Technical Project Manager - Airborne Optical Systems. This role centers on turning technical ambition into delivered reality within a highly multidisciplinary organization including Engineering Labs (Electrical, Mechanical, Software, Gateware, Systems), Operations, Leadership, and Customers. The role emphasizes outcome ownership—clarifying priorities, managing risk, sequencing interdependencies, and driving decisions in complex, fast-moving environments. This is a senior role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, brings technical credibility, and leads through influence rather than authority. You will guide programs from early uncertainty through execution, balancing long-term system milestones with short-term tradeoffs in design, supply chain, and resourcing. As PVLabs evolves, you will help shape how programs are planned, governed, and scaled across a growing portfolio of airborne ISR systems. Your Center of Gravity: The PVLabs Engineering Council. You will work closely with the PVLabs Engineering Council—a small group of Staff and Principal Engineers spanning all engineering disciplines. Rather than micromanaging tasks, you will rely on this group as a force multiplier: translating program priorities into executable engineering work, surfacing technical risk early, and sequencing interdependent deliverables. Your success depends on strong relationships, shared context, and mutual trust—combining your program-level ownership with their deep technical leadership. What You Will be Responsible For Own cost, schedule, risk, and performance across complex technical programs from kickoff through delivery Develop and maintain integrated master schedules, technical baselines, and risk frameworks Balance engineering ambition with production realities, supply chain constraints, and resourcing limits Cross-Functional Leadership: Align Electrical, Mechanical, Software, Optics, and Gateware workstreams Translate complex technical data into decision-ready insight for leadership and customers Manage stakeholder communication with clarity, urgency, and judgment Decision & Dependency Management: Sequence and deconflict interdependent deliverables across disciplines Anticipate downstream impacts and resolve issues before they escalate Drive tradeoff decisions grounded in realism and system-level thinking Process & Scale Enablement: Help shape PVLabs ERP-integrated project management approach, including resource modeling, material planning, and NRE forecasting Contribute to how we plan, track, and communicate work as the organization scales What You're About We value how people work as much as what they deliver. You are someone who: Sees both the big picture and the work-package detail Leads through credibility, diplomacy, and clarity rather than authority Is energized by complex, fast-moving technical environments Brings order to ambiguity through structured thinking and decisive action Thinks systemically across electro-mechanical-optical products Communicates confidently without ego—and knows when to ask questions Is comfortable navigating tension, tradeoffs, and competing priorities Your Background This role is intentionally not suited to generic project management backgrounds. You have spent a meaningful portion of your career working inside complex, hardware-driven engineering environments—where systems are physical, failure is expensive, and integration risk is real. You understand that managing a program like this requires more than process fluency; it requires technical intuition, judgment under uncertainty, and credibility with engineers. You likely bring: 8–10+ years in engineering execution, NPI project engineering, or technical program management within aerospace, defense, ISR, robotics, advanced mechatronics, precision optics, avionics, or similarly complex physical systems Direct experience delivering multi-disciplinary products involving software, electronics, FPGA/gateware, precision mechanics, optics, and production ramp-up Exposure to environments where prototypes fly, move, or operate in real-world conditions Design decisions constrained by physics, certification, supply chain, and manufacturability Rework is costly, schedules are unforgiving, and iteration alone is not an option You are comfortable operating where: Documentation, plans, and designs evolve together Technical teams are small, highly specialized, and deeply opinionated Program risk is driven as much by integration and sequencing as by task completion Explicitly Not a Fit if: This role will not be a good match if most of your experience comes from: Financial services, enterprise IT, SaaS, or purely digital products Public sector, policy, or compliance-driven program environments Consulting-heavy roles where delivery was abstracted from execution Large organizations where programs were insulated from hands-on engineering, production, or supplier realities Those environments develop strong general PM skills—but they do not prepare you for the technical density, decision pressure, and cross-disciplinary integration required here. What Does Translate You don’t need to have worked on airborne gimbals specifically—but you do need to have lived inside complex engineered systems where: Software and hardware co-evolve Engineering trade-offs directly affect cost, schedule, and performance Programs succeed or fail based on sequencing, realism, and technical judgment—not reporting cadence If you’ve helped shepherd a difficult system from concept through integration and delivery—and you know why it was hard—you're likely in the right territory. Why PVLabs? Because you want to work on something hard, meaningful, and you want to do it with people who are driven, smart, and resourceful. You work best in a place built around autonomy, mastery and purpose — and where performance, trust, and accountability are measured in outputs, not hours. You will be front and center of a mission-driven engineering culture, designing high-performance airborne stabilized imaging systems. Seniority level Not Applicable Employment type Full-time Job function Project Management and Information Technology Industries Aviation and Aerospace Component Manufacturing Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at PV Labs by 2x Sign in to set job alerts for “Technical Project Manager” roles. #J-18808-Ljbffr