Staff Program Manager, NPI

About Us:

BlackSky is a real-time intelligence company. We own and operate the world's most advanced space-based intelligence platform and provide customers satellite imagery, automated analytics and high-frequency monitoring of strategic locations, economic assets and events from around the globe. BlackSky is trusted by the most demanding allied military and intelligence organizations and commercial companies to deliver foresight into critical matters that affect national security and the economy. BlackSky's data enables governments and businesses to see, understand and anticipate change as it happens, giving them the ultimate strategic advantage so they can act quickly. Our global team works with cutting-edge technology to make a difference around the world and prides itself on being people-first, customer-focused and fun.

BlackSky is looking for a New Product Introduction, Program Manager to drive our new satellite engineering development programs as they enter production. This role has a keen eye for operational processes and systems flows and can work to bridge gaps between engineering, manufacturing development, and systems level testing, in an effort to maintain stable production flows aligned to business goals.  The ideal candidate will work across software, space hardware design, assembly, integration and test, engineering,  and supply chain as well as the broader production support interface to define, develop and implement processes that maintain hardware and product deliveries to planned scope and schedule. This role will work to take released designs from the engineering team into the first production builds and manage changes through to the product baseline as the design evolves. This individual must excel at prioritizing across competing requirements and have a keen eye to distill technical constraints and find opportunities while driving accountable scope and schedules.

The ideal candidate excels in an environment of competing priorities and has an instinctive ability to distill complex technical challenges into goals and directives that motivate a team and drive actionable results. The role is responsible for developing business rhythms and resolving constraints that will drive actionable insights into the planning objectives and steer towards business goals for the constellation. This position requires an independent thinker who is consistently striving to learn, grow, and lead. This role will require the ability to present to engineering, product, and adjacent business stakeholders and hold teams accountable for plans for engineering managers and executives.  

This role is onsite and expected to be in BlackSky’s Tukwila office daily to support production activities and reports to the Director, Technical Programs. 

Responsibilities:

• Manage, develop, and support vendor relationships with site partners to ensure uptime, maintenance support activities, and maintain production operation for BlackSky’s commercial ground station network.
• Develop, plan, and drive optimization into the site maintenance and support activities at operational ground station considering the requirements to support satellite operations.
• Evaluate and develop plans for new site locations, establish strategic partnerships and develop plans for new site launches to production in line with our capacity plans.
• Collaborate internally to communicate, commit, and champion new development efforts and sustainment efforts to keep the ground station network uptime needed to support the constellation.
• Build and manage the plan to test and validate the equipment ahead of site deployment and demonstrate risk reduction strategies. Work with cross-functional teams to pull burn down risk in the plan with testing and validation milestones.
• Optimize, define, and partner with internal teams to purchase, catalog, test, and track equipment across existing and upcoming sites. Define and develop processes that increase efficiency and manage cost to a budget.
• Support, define, and track the integrated hardware and software development plans with collaboration from Software Engineering Management.
• Serve as point of contact for the ground station equipment and resources and work to allocate them effectively amongst stakeholders, managing key business objectives and priorities.
• Other job-related duties as assigned. 

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, computer science, software engineering, or other technical discipline.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience with material planning and supply chain in a hardware production environment
• 10 years experience with complex system design and/or launch of highly integrated software and hardware products
• Experience managing and developing detailed manufacturing and production schedules for hardware programs.
• Experience working with test procedures and an engineering change control process
• Proven track record of delivering production units to a schedule, while partnering with supply chain, production, and engineering teams.
• Experience with ERP systems  and product lifecycle management
• Minimum of 5-8 years relevant experience managing cross functional teams as a program manager
• Experience working with complex systems with highly integrated dependencies.
• Possess exceptional team leadership and inter-team cooperation and organization skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Project management qualifications such as PMP, Scrum Master etc.
• Possess strong team leadership and inter-team cooperation and organization skills.
• Production experience of space system or space systems hardware components.

Life at BlackSky for full-time benefits eligible employees includes:

• Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life, and AD&D insurance
• BlackSky pays 100% of employee-only premiums for medical, dental and vision and contributes $100/month for out-of-pocket expenses!
• 15 days of PTO, 11 Company holidays, four Floating Holidays (pro-rated based on hire date), one day of paid volunteerism leave per year, parental leave and more.
• 401(k) pre-tax and Roth deferral options with employer match
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)
• Employee Assistance and Travel Assistance Programs
• Employer matching donations
• Professional development
• Mac or PC? Your choice!
• Awesome swag

The anticipated salary range for candidates in Seattle, WA is $160,000-$180,000 per year. The final compensation package offered to a successful candidate will be dependent on specific background and education. BlackSky is a multi-state employer, and this pay scale may not reflect salary ranges in other states or locations outside of Seattle, WA.

BlackSky is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer All Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

EEO/AAP/ Pay Transparency Statements: https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/eeopost.pdf
https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/OFCCP_EEO_Supplement_Final_JRF_QA_508c.pdf