Technical Program Manager (Lead)

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra is based in the USA but 100% remote; we do not have a physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Italy, Portugal, and India.

**Please only apply to one opening. If you are a better fit for another opening, our team will move your application. Candidates who apply to multiple openings will not be considered.**

Phaidra is looking for a driven engineering leader to join our Engineering org as a Technical Program Manager (Lead). As the first TPM at Phaidra, you will own and grow Phaidra Engineering’s core TPM function. The ideal candidate is an influential technical leader who can thrive and succeed in an entrepreneurial environment. You are able separate what's important from what's urgent and find the best path forward from among multiple scenarios, earn the trust of stakeholders, and improve the efficiency of our cross-functional organization. You possess a strong technical program management background and have demonstrated experience leading medium to large projects.

For this position, we are seeking a team member located within one of the following areas: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, or European Union.

Responsibilities

1. Core Technical Program Management & Cross-Functional Leadership: Develop and manage complex technology projects across multiple teams, ensuring they are delivered on time, and meet our high-quality standards -
   • Take up important problems that need to be solved as defined by product teams or as identified internally within engineering.
   • Have a wide view of the engineering architecture & teams and create and drive solutions for these problems. Identify what already exists and doesn’t exist in terms of technology, skill set, headcount and processes.
   • Work with product & engineering teams to create a solution, break it down into manageable pieces, develop functional specifications, decide on inter-team contracts (APIs, non-functional requirements, etc.) and ensure the project is scoped correctly.
   • Define the schedule with checkpoints & milestones and ensure on time delivery of the project.
   • Be a voice to senior leadership to ensure appropriate hiring is done in the technical teams.
   • Understand security & compliance considerations of the entire **project and ensure they are included in the non-functional requirements.
   • Drive the right vendor partnerships & support to de-risk projects.
2. Monitoring & Communication: Monitor program progress and keep all stakeholders & leadership informed of the progress of all projects and of any issues that may impact deliverables.
3. Risk & Dependency Management: Proactively identify potential risks and issues within projects, developing contingency plans and solutions to address them.
4. Process Development: Establish and implement effective processes and methodologies to ensure efficient delivery. Be flexible around process, using process as a to