Senior Program Manager

Alert Venture Foundry (AVF) is a Massachusetts-based startup studio building robotics and automation ventures from scratch. Founded in 2024 by John Lert (founder of Alert Innovation, acquired by Walmart) and Rob Sullivan, AVF combines embedded hardware, real-time software, and cloud services into new companies, several running in parallel inside one shared engineering organization. We're small and growing fast — if you want your program management to actually run the program instead of report on it, this is that job.

About the Role

AVF's Program Management Office is standing up the operating rhythm that lets a small, fast-scaling engineering org run multiple hardware-intensive ventures at once, without Lead Engineers or the Chief Research & Development Officer carrying the schedule in their heads. Reporting to the Head of PMO, you'll own the program plan for one or more active AVF ventures: milestones, critical path, dependencies, and staffing, tracked as a living plan.

This is a hands-on program management role inside a resource-constrained, multi-program portfolio, not a status-reporting job. You'll work side-by-side with the head engineer and be the person who makes a program runnable.

What You'll Do

• Own the integrated program plan for one or more active AVF ventures — robotics hardware platforms, embedded systems, or connected physical products — including milestones, critical path, cross-team dependencies, staffing requirements, and key technical and program risks
• Run weekly plan reconciliation with each program's Lead Engineer; hold the team accountable to a plan you own, not one handed to you after the fact
• Apply AVF's standard PMO operating cadence and templates, including 4-Quad status, workstream reviews, phase gate reviews, risk registers, and NPI stage entry/exit criteria
• Track cross-program dependencies — including resourcing, technical, and vendor — and surface conflicts before they impact program schedules
• Translate program plans into dated staffing requirements and feed them into AVF's portfolio-wide supply/demand model
• Understand system architecture and follow technical risk reviews closely enough to challenge schedule assumptions on technical grounds, without owning the underlying engineering decisions
• Identify schedule threats early, develop recovery options with the team, and drive decisions and escalations when milestones, resources, or technical dependencies are at risk
• Contribute to the executive-facing portfolio rollup, ensuring leadership has a clear view of program health, major risks, dependencies, and resource needs

What We're Looking For

Required Skills

• 7+ years of technical program or project management experience, with meaningful experience in hardware, robotics, or other physical-systems product development
• A track record of owning a program plan end to end in a fast-moving, resource-constrained environment
• Experience driving cross-functional teams towards milestones and commitments without direct authority
• Comfortable reading technical dependencies across mechanical, electrical, software, and controls well enough to sequence a schedule around them and recognize when technical assumptions put the plan at risk
• Experience building or standardizing program management process, including templates, cadences, planning structures, and reporting practices
• Direct, low-ego communicator who can hold engineering leads accountable without owning their technical decisions
• Proficiency with Jira, SharePoint, Confluence or comparable program management and collaboration tools, and experience building reliable sources of truth and tracking that goes beyond spreadsheets

Preferred, but not required

• Experience in a venture studio, multi-program portfolio, or startup running several concurrent product lines
• Background with NPI process and phase-gate methodology (SAR/PDR/CDR or equivalent)
• Experience with robotics, UAVs, embedded systems, or connected hardware development
• Experience managing programs where engineering resources are shared across multiple products or ventures

Why Alert Venture Foundry

If you want to own the operating system behind how a robotics startup studio ships hardware on time, we encourage you to apply.

Alert Venture Foundry is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity across all dimensions. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.