Engineering Program Manager

About Us
Space Machines Company (SMC) is transforming the future of space operations with a bold mission: to deliver Roadside Assistance in Space.

As orbit becomes more congested and contested, we act as the "first responders" protecting the satellites that power life on Earth—from communications to navigation. Partnering with both commercial operators and government agencies, we're strengthening space resilience and enabling the growth of a sustainable space economy.

We're building this critical capability through hyperscale spacecraft manufacturing—delivering Optimus Viper spacecraft at mass-production economics with rapid-response capability.

The future of space is one where satellites are monitored, maintained, and protected in orbit. At SMC, we're making that future real.

Why Join Us
We're a start-up — things move fast, resources are lean, and we're building as we go.

What we offer is opportunity: to learn at speed, grow with the company, and leave your fingerprints on something that's never been done before. At Space Machines Company, engineers, innovators, and problem-solvers join forces to push the limits of what's possible.

If you want to build technology designed to protect and power humanity's future in space — and see your work make a visible impact — this is where you'll do it.

How We Work
We are builders first.

We approach every challenge through a cycle of design, build, test, and refine — making ideas real, learning from results, and improving with each iteration.

We challenge assumptions to make sure we're solving the right problems, and we strengthen our solutions through collaboration and feedback.

We use process where it adds value and set it aside where it slows us down. There are a lot of firsts here, and we meet them with curiosity and courage.

We win as one team.

Requirements
As our Engineering Program manager, you play a central role in driving predictable delivery and operational excellence across Space Machines Company's engineering organisation.

You spend your time orchestrating build schedules, removing delivery friction, and scaling the systems and processes that enable our engineers to deliver at speed — and shaping how we grow.

In this role, you own outcomes from end to end, including:

Schedule & Resource Management
– Manage the master engineering schedule across build iterations and coordinate cross-functional resources. Work with team leads to establish milestone tasks, assign them to engineers, and maintain accountability. Identify and resolve blockages that hinder execution, escalating conflicts to VP Engineering when needed.

Financial Management
– Monitor spend against budget, forecast burn rates, and manage procurement decisions. Prioritise spending to align with program needs and cash flow constraints. Provide financial visibility and control to keep the program on budget.

Supply Chain & Logistics
– Ensure hardware is ordered on time accounting for schedule and lead times. Manage vendor payments to maintain relationships and on-time delivery. Coordinate test facility bookings to support integration and qualification activities.

Build Process & Methodology
– Drive progressive integration methodology adoption across the engineering organization. Track build iteration progress and ensure teams maintain 2-week cycle discipline while meeting quality and integration standards.

Program Governance
– Identify, document and manage program risks throughout the mission lifecycle. Track and enforce system requirements to ensure deliverables meet mission objectives and customer expectations.

Data & Continuous Improvement
– Collect build metrics, lessons learned, and manufacturing capability data to generate actionable insights for VP Engineering strategic decisions. Identify opportunities for process improvement across build cycles.

Stakeholder Management
– Manage relationships with suppliers, technical partners, and customer engineering teams. Coordinate rapid problem-solving for build failures, integration issues, or resource constraints. Provide regular updates on progress, challenges, and successes to stakeholders and leadership.

About You
You'll thrive in this role if you bring:

A builder's mindset
— turning ideas and theory into working systems through hands-on development, simulation, and testing.

An iterative approach
— designing, building, testing, learning, and improving with each cycle. Comfortable with weekly integration cadence and rapid validation of new algorithms.

Collaboration and curiosity
— working across disciplines and exploring beyond your own expertise. Exploring beyond your own expertise to solve novel problems in novel ways.

Adaptability and ownership
— thriving in a fast-scaling, evolving environment where requirements emerge from building. Driving outcomes end to end without waiting for perfect specifications.

Proven Experience

• 5+ years in engineering program management, operations, or systems engineering, delivering complex hardware systems with quality, speed, and continuous improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to manage schedules, resources, and budgets across multi-disciplinary engineering teams
• Experience managing, leading and coaching teams

Bonus Experience

• Space systems or aerospace program management experience
• Experience with rapid iteration methodologies in hardware-focused environments
• Startup experience with fast-paced development cycles and resource constraints

Benefits
What You Actually Get
You Won't Get Rich Quickly. But You'll Get
Competitive salary
– Fair pay for hard work. Commensurate with experience and the impact you'll have.

Meaningful equity (ESOP)
– Real ownership stake. Stock options that matter because you're joining early enough for them to matter. If we win, you win.

Actual leave
– Annual leave plus personal/sick days. Because even warriors need to recover.

Public holidays
– All of them.

And freedom. Real freedom to build, decide, and move without waiting for permission. That's not a benefit you'll find in a package description, but it's worth more than most perks on this list.