Technical Program Manager, Digital

Department: Engineering

Location: Torrance, CA

Employment Type: FullTime

Northwood is a modern space infrastructure company bringing the benefits of space to the masses through advanced communications technology. We are building a global network of phased array ground stations that enable real-time, reliable communication for satellite missions such as national security, global connectivity, and disaster response. With a vertically integrated approach, Northwood designs, builds, and rapidly deploys scalable systems that power the next generation of space missions. If you like solving complex challenges and seeing your work deployed around the world with real impact, Northwood is the place to do it.

Role

Northwood is building a global network of satellite ground stations, and the Digital org spans backend, frontend, DSP, FPGA, embedded, and infrastructure. As these products run in parallel against hard customer commitments. This role owns the horizontal layer: real-time visibility into engineering delivery risk across the Digital portfolio, and the processes and tooling that let the org execute coherently.

This is not a role that owns technical direction or schedules IC time; that authority stays with engineers and functional leads. It is the role that holds the integrated delivery picture, surfaces and resolves cross-team risk before it becomes a missed pass, and gives mission management and customers a straight answer on where things stand.

Responsibilities

• Maintain real-time visibility into engineering delivery risk across Digital products: modem pipelines, beamforming, telemetry, scheduling, and ground-station software

• Own the software development lifecycle across these products: build and maintain execution plans, dependency maps, and delivery schedules, and drive clarity on priorities, ownership, technical debt, and operational readiness

• Build the processes, tooling, and visibility that let teams coordinate without relying on proximity and ad-hoc alignment

• Identify and drive resolution of integration risks across the hardware/software and cross-domain boundaries; escalate to engineering leadership when team-level resolution fails

• Coordinate testing and validation across simulation, staging, lab, and deployed environments

• Partner with mission management and participate directly in customer meetings, translating engineering state into an honest read on delivery risk for programs and customers

• Flag staffing gaps to the relevant functional leads, who make the staffing call

• Partner with engineering leadership to improve development velocity, operational reliability, and deployment readiness

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years in Technical Program Management, Systems Engineering, or technical engineering leadership

• Strong technical understanding of software systems and distributed infrastructure

• Experience working with DSP, RF, embedded, or real-time systems teams

• Track record of building delivery processes and tooling, not just running existing ones

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with SDRs, modem systems, satellite communications, wireless, or telecom infrastructure

• Familiarity with DSP concepts such as filtering, synchronization, modulation/demodulation, channel estimation, or beamforming

• Experience coordinating FPGA, embedded Linux, or high-performance compute efforts

• Experience in customer-facing or program-interface roles

• Aerospace, defense, or mission-critical systems experience

• Familiarity with ITAR, classified systems, or regulated operational environments

Additional Information:

If you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.

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.

Northwood Space is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Northwood Space is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.