Technical Program Manager, Flight Software
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Project management
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of technical program or project management experience working directly with software engineering teams, ideally on embedded, flight, or other high-reliability software.
- Demonstrated ability to build and maintain detailed schedules, track dependencies, and keep a software team on track against firm external milestones (e.g., integration, test, launch dates).
- Comfort working closely with software engineers day-to-day with enough technical fluency to understand what's actually blocking progress, not just what's reported as blocked.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to give leadership a clear, honest schedule picture without diluting or overstating risk.
- Comfort operating in a fast-paced, aggressive-timeline environment with shifting priorities and high ambiguity.
Nice to have
- Experience program-managing flight software, embedded software, or firmware for aerospace, satellite, or other high-reliability systems.
- Background as a software engineer or in a technical role, sufficient to read a schedule critically and ask the right questions of the team.
- Familiarity with modern software program tooling (e.g., Jira, Confluence, Git-based workflows, CI/CD) and experience building schedule/status dashboards.
- Experience coordinating software milestones against hardware integration and test schedules on a multidisciplinary program.
- Experience supporting resource and capacity planning for an engineering team.
Full description
K2 is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, unlocking performance levels previously out of reach across every orbit. Backed by over $1 billion in total funding from leading investors including Altimeter Capital, ICONIQ, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and T. Rowe Price — and with over $1 billion in signed contracts across commercial and US government customers, we're mass-producing the highest-power satellite platforms ever built for missions from LEO to deep space.
The rise of heavy-lift launch vehicles is shifting the industry from an era of mass constraint to one of mass abundance, and we believe this new era demands a fundamentally different class of spacecraft. Engineered to survive the harshest radiation environments and to fully capitalize on today's and tomorrow's massive rockets, K2 satellites deliver unmatched capability at constellation scale and across multiple orbits.
With multiple launches in 2027 and plans to scale to 100 satellites a year, we're Building Bigger — helping develop the solar system and build toward a Kardashev Type II (K2) civilization. If you are a motivated individual who thrives in a fast-paced environment and you're excited about contributing to the success of a high-growth Series D-funded company, we'd love for you to apply.
As a Technical Program Manager embedded with our Flight and Ground Software teams, you will own the schedule that keeps software on track for every K2 satellite program. Our software spans everything from embedded code on microcontrollers to cloud-based ground and operations services, and it sits on the critical path of nearly every mission milestone. Your job is to keep that path clear.
You will work day-to-day with software engineering leads to build and maintain the development schedule, track dependencies against hardware and test milestones, and surface risks and blockers before they become schedule slips. You’ll give leadership and program stakeholders a clear, current picture of where the software stack stands. This isn’t a role about writing code. It’s about giving the engineers who do the structure, cadence, and visibility they need to hit their dates.
*This role is onsite at our Torrance office*
Responsibilities:
- Own and maintain the software team's development schedule, including sprint/release plans, integration milestones, and dependencies on hardware, test, and other software subsystems.
- Track day-to-day progress against the schedule, identify slips early, and drive resolution of blockers with the responsible engineers and leads.
- Coordinate flight & ground software milestones (integration drops, flight readiness reviews, customer emulators) with systems, avionics, AI&T, and mission operations to keep the broader program on schedule.