Software Technical Program Manager - L4

Job Description

Sophia Space builds the full software stack for orbital edge computing, including operating systems, firmware, platform infrastructure, runtime services, automation, and mission workloads deployed on NVIDIA Jetson hardware in low Earth orbit.

The Technical Program Manager (TPM) owns the execution system that turns milestone goals, technical plans, release commitments, and cross-functional dependencies into a coherent program flow. This role partners with software leadership to define program plans, milestone success criteria, measurable outcomes, capacity constraints, and clear scope, schedule, risk, and quality trade-offs.

The Software Technical Program Manager is a required participant in software release decisions and may recommend holding a release when dependencies, risks, validation evidence, or operational readiness are incomplete. Engineering leads remain accountable for technical correctness within their domains, the Senior Technical Program Manager presents the integrated program-readiness assessment, and software leadership retains final release authority.

Location & Eligibility

This position is based in Pasadena, California, with hybrid work preferred and remote arrangements considered based on candidate qualifications and business needs.

This position may require access to technology that is subject to U.S. export control laws. To comply with applicable ITAR and EAR regulations, applicants must qualify as a U.S. Person, as defined under those regulations. U.S. Persons generally include U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (green card holders), and certain protected individuals as defined by applicable law.

Primary Responsibilities

1. Own the software milestone execution rhythm from planning through release, including scope, success criteria, feature decomposition, dependency tracking, readiness reviews, carry-forward work, and retrospectives.
2. Partner with software leadership and engineering leads to define integrated program plans, measurable outcomes, sequencing assumptions, capacity constraints, and clear scope, schedule, risk, and quality trade-offs.
3. Translate milestone goals into coordinated execution plans across platform infrastructure, runtime services, mission workloads, operating systems, firmware, automation, observability, and operations.
4. Maintain an accurate execution record covering milestone progress, ownership, dependencies, risks, decisions, carry-forward work, and release status without centralizing routine ticket administration.
5. Establish intake, triage, and risk-management practices that protect engineering focus while ensuring requests, assumptions, issues, and unresolved decisions have clear owners and next actions.
6. Coordinate software release readiness by defining readiness criteria with engineering leads, identifying gaps, presenting an integrated assessment, and recommending that releases be held when material risk remains unresolved.
7. Coordinate with business development and product teams on capability needs, feature releases, schedules and scope.

Required Skills

1. Seven or more years of combined professional experience, including at least five years as a hands-on individual contributor in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, embedded software, or a comparable technical discipline.
2. Two or more years of technical program management, engineering program management, technical project leadership, release management, or equivalent cross-functional execution ownership, which may overlap with an individual-contributor or technical-lead role.
3. Ability to engage credibly with senior engineers on architecture, interfaces, dependencies, failure modes, validation strategy, and operational trade-offs while respecting engineering ownership of technical decisions.
4. Experience managing complex software programs involving multiple engineering owners, integration boundaries, technical dependencies, and cross-functional stakeholders.
5. Strong understanding of software planning, integration, validation, release readiness, risk management, retrospectives, and operational support.
6. Experience establishing lightweight engineering execution systems that support milestone planning, dependency tracking, decision management, risk visibility, and release coordination without creating unnecessary process overhead.
7. Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to distinguish ticket completion from integration readiness, demonstrated system behavior, and defensible release confidence.

Desired Skills

1. Experience supporting aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomous systems, embedded systems, distributed platforms, or other mission-critical engineering environments.
2. Experience coordinating hardware and software integration where delivery depends on laboratory assets, firmware readiness, vendor inputs, or physical-system availability.
3. Familiarity with modern software delivery, infrastructure automation, container orchestration, observability, deployment automation, and production operations.
4. Experience with milestone-based engineering programs, release gates, integration events, operational-readiness reviews, or customer-facing technical demonstrations.
5. Experience building or improving intake, planning, dependency tracking, risk management, and release-readiness practices for a growing engineering organization.
6. Familiarity with engineering design reviews, decision records, architecture governance, difficult-to-reverse technical decisions, and small teams whose engineering leads own broad technical surfaces.