Senior Technical Project Manager

Job description

Overview

Lightship is the first American all-electric recreational vehicle manufacturer currently developing an aerodynamic, battery-powered trailer for the electric age. As the macro transition to an all-electric transportation ecosystem accelerates, Lightship is bringing the increased convenience and superior performance that electrification offers to a pastime enjoyed by over 11 million American families.

Honoring Diverse Perspectives

Lightship is committed to hiring and developing top talent from diverse backgrounds. We believe representing and supporting diverse groups is key to the success of our team members, customers, shareholders and the achievement of our mission and vision. We operate in a collaborative environment with a flat organizational structure and expect a high degree of integrity, autonomy and creativity from all members of the team.

About the Role

As a Technical Project Manager (TPM) you will lead complex, cross-disciplinary projects from studio concept through customer delivery. This role requires a strong foundation in systems engineering and project management principals, with the ability to provide technical leadership within engineering teams and between operations, quality, and business stakeholders.

The ideal candidate is equally comfortable making daily decisions, managing schedules, budgets, and risks as they are translating technical requirements, solving engineering problems, aligning multidisciplinary teams, and driving execution against strategic objectives.

What success looks like:

- Projects are delivered on time, within scope, and aligned with strategic objectives.

- Cross-disciplinary teams are aligned, informed, and executing effectively.

- Risks are identified early and mitigated before impacting cost, schedule, or quality.

- Technical decisions are made with a system-level perspective and long-term impact in mind.

Responsibilities - Project Management and Strategic Planning

• Lead end-to-end planning and execution of technical projects, including scope definition, schedules, budgets, milestones, and deliverables.
• Delegate and manage day-to-day tasks and development activities across team members as well as host regular core team meetings.
• Develop and maintain integrated project plans that account for dependencies across hardware, software, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain.
• Track progress against objectives, KPIs, identify deviations early, and drive corrective actions to keep projects on track.
• Facilitate design and phase-gate reviews as well as provide regular executive status updates with clear, data-driven communication.
• Collaborate with leadership to align project roadmaps with business and product strategies.
• Identify and evaluate tradeoffs between cost, schedule, performance, and risk to support informed decision-making.
• Work across the program management teams to propose and execute changes that address the highest risks from a company wide perspective
• Escalate issues appropriately with clear options and recommendations.

Responsibilities - Systems Engineering and Technical Leadership

• Translate high-level business and customer needs into clear technical requirements and success criteria.
• Apply systems engineering principals to capture design architecture and ensure requirements traceability is maintained through verification.
• Generate interface definition and dependencies to maintain alignment across subsystems.
• Lead technical discussions, trade studies, DFMEAs, risk assessments, and decision-making forums to resolve complex, cross-disciplinary issues and drive early design choices, validation, testing activities to reduce downstream risk.
• Review regulatory requirements and ensure all systems are designed to meet them.
• Serve as a technical lead and act as the primary point of contact across engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical, software), ensuring system-level performance, reliability, safety, and compliance objectives and tests are met.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field; or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of experience in technical project or program management for automotive, industrial, manufacturing, aerospace, or similar complex, electro-mechanical systems.
• Strong understanding of systems engineering principles and product development lifecycles.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams without direct authority.
• Excellent organizational, analytical, and communication skills.
• Experience managing technical risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Engineering, Systems Engineering, or Business (MBA).
• PMP, PgMP, or similar project management certification.
• Experience in automotive, regulated, safety-critical, or highly engineered products.
• Familiarity with Agile, hybrid, and traditional project management methodologies.
• Hands-on technical background in hardware, software, or embedded systems.

Equity

• Lightship compensation consists of the yearly salary above plus equity, which gives you a stake in the company.

$125,000 - $145,000 a year

Onsite/Hybrid Work

Hybrid roles at Lightship require onsite work from our offices Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tuesdays and Fridays are optional work from home days, when your work will be executed more successfully from home. Speak to the hiring manager to learn more.

Employee Benefits & Philosophy - Applies to Full Time Employees only

- Healthcare, Dental, Vision

- 401k

- Flexible Paid Time Off - that we actually want you to use!

- 8 Company Holidays + the company observes a period of scheduled downtime during the end of the year for a week, allowing all employees to enjoy a break

- 12 weeks paid parental leave

- $2,000 per year towards an RV trip of your own &/or professional development opportunities - we call this a LightTrip

Lightship offers all of its full time employees and their dependents full benefits including health, dental and vision insurance and covers 100% of the insurance premium. We are on a mission to create a more healthful all-electric experience for a pastime that millions of families enjoy and believe strongly that our team should not have to worry about quality healthcare for themselves or their loved ones along the way.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.