Technical Product/Program Manager - 2136

Company Description

KIOXIA America, Inc. is the U.S.-based subsidiary of KIOXIA Corporation, a leading worldwide supplier of flash memory and solid state drives (SSDs). From the invention of flash memory to today’s breakthrough BiCS FLASH™ 3D flash memory technology, KIOXIA continues to pioneer innovative memory, SSD and software solutions that enrich people's lives and expand society's horizons. The company's innovative BiCS FLASH™ 3D flash memory technology is shaping the future of storage in high-density applications, including advanced smartphones, PCs, SSDs, automotive, and data centers.

Job Description

KIOXIA America, Inc., is looking for a Technical Product/Program Manager to support the Customer Technical Support department in the Texas office. The ideal candidate will work as a lead qualification engineer to qualify KIOXIA SSD SAS & NVMe storage products. The ideal candidate will also take ownership of all technical issues and deliverables and communicate frequently with team members to ensure everyone remains synchronized and aware of next steps.

This role reports to the Sr Manager, Customer Technical Support, Central Region, SSD BU.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with SME (Subject Matter Experts) within Kioxia and at customer on highly-technical issues to develop strategies to test and resolve qualification-related issues with products.
• Develop a sophisticated understanding of the customer’s qualification process and documents to insure that priorities are set, resources are assigned and all milestones and deadlines are met.
• Host weekly calls with customer and internal teams to share status and updates on program. Capture action items and assign due dates.  Drive all items to closure in a timely manner.
• Develop strong working relationships with Japan Engineering teams as well as cross-functional US-Based colleagues.
• Insure that qualification test plans are accurate, equipment is in place and resources are available.  Assist with future planning and acquisition of test equipment as new customer systems are released.

Requirements:

• Planning & Organizational Skills – Product qualifications are complex and can take up to 9 months to complete.  Must be able to meticulously organize upwards of 200 – 300 tasks and prioritize them properly based on criticality and due dates.  Share these plans with a broad cross-functional team so that everyone understands the targets, deliverables and ownership for each task.  Must be adaptive, as priorities can change quickly and tasks may need to be re-shuffled to accommodate resource constraints or other newly identified priorities.  Also responsible for legacy support of products once they have been qualified.  Must be able to balance pre/post Qualification support roles effectively.
• Communication - Critical to success in position.  Candidate must work across many cross-functional teams (both within Kioxia and at customer) to investigate, plan and resolve issues.  Must be comfortable initiating calls / meetings and take a leadership role in driving actions and assigning work to both internal and external team members.  Frequent updates via email each day, and weekly status calls are required.  Calls with Engineering Team in Japan will also be required on a weekly basis.  Insure that the entire team is always aware of impediments, schedule risks and next steps to confirm that key milestones are met.
• Teamwork – This is a cross-functional role and candidate MUST be capable of working comfortably in a team environment.  This includes the sharing of information, status and strategies, as well as developing strong inter-personal relationships both with KIOXIA team members as well as with the customer.  This builds on the communication skills noted above, but also adds the cooperative spirit necessary to deal with changes in direction or priority that are sometimes dictated by the customer.  Pragmatism is required to always seek the best path toward the end goal, and avoiding unnecessary conflicts or disagreements that could damage the relationship.
• Problem Solving – Candidate will need to not only understand the qualification process extremely well, but will also seek to overcome unexpected obstacles that are a part of every large project.  Creativity and a Triage approach can be used to work-around temporary resource issues to insure that forward progress is always being made.  Being able to see alternative ways to meet goals and building consensus with the team to try new approaches are valuable for this role.
• Decision Making - Critical decisions made during a qualification are rarely made by a single team member.  Most are made in a larger group setting with upper-manage