Program Manager, Battery Operations

The Position:

Natron seeks a Program Manager to lead the New Product Introduction (NPI) process for fully integrated battery systems, based Natron’s proprietary cell technology. The Program Manager will work closely with, and coordinate activities of, Marketing, Product Engineering, and Manufacturing. Activities to be coordinated include leading the definition of new products in customer terms, translation of applicable industry standards and customer requirements into product specifications, development and management of program schedules to meet customer delivery targets and company goals, and coordination of project teams to meet specifications and timelines. Strong candidates have prior program management experience in the field of batteries or other electronic hardware systems resulting in >1 million units shipped. The person for this position has a positive attitude, collaborates well, and does what it takes to get the job done.

Responsibilities:

• Develop Marketing Requirements Documents (MRD) and Product Requirements Documents (PRD) in coordination with Business Development, Marketing and Product Development functions.
• Collaborate with Finance, Product Development and Manufacturing to predict cost structures and lead trade-off studies to balance features with product cost for acceptable margins at launch and over time.
• Develop product definition documents and specifications in coordination with Marketing, Product Development and Manufacturing.
• Coordinate product testing with independent test labs and customers to demonstrate performance and compliance with industry standards.
• Develop coherent dependency diagrams and Gantt charts for the overall program, integrating and coordinating the activities of the key business functions of Natron.
• Actively and continuously identify risk, highlight risks to all business functions involved in the program and ensure timely prioritization and mitigation of risks.
• Coordinate with Reliability Engineering function to ensure that lessons learned in field trials and development work are properly incorporated into internal product specifications for thorough mitigation of development and new product introduction risks.
• Provide program updates to the executive staff on a regular basis.

Experience and Skills:

• 10 years’ industrial experience with at least 3-5 years experience as a program manager for electronic hardware products.
• Prior experience leading the NPI process for complex, multi-technology, integrated power electronics products or equivalent experience.
• Prior experience in defining product requirements from voice of the customer input and thorough understanding of industry standards.
• Strong, collaborative leadership style to coordinate activities of different business functions to achieve timely and cost effective new product introduction.
• Knowledge of electrical hardware products, industry standards (e.g. UL, CE, Telcordia).
• Capable of developing and leading complex project plans from scratch using PMP I/P/E/M&C/C Processes
• Organized, thorough and has a critical eye for identifying risks.
• Effective communicator who is comfortable speaking up in a leadership role.
• Has a do-whatever-it-takes attitude, thrives in a fast-paced start up environment and can deliver project deliverables on time.
• PMP Certification desired
• A bachelor’s degree or higher in a science or engineering field.

Logistics:

• Compensation: competitive with other NPI program management positions at Bay Area hardware start-up companies.
• Regular, full-time position reporting to the VP Operations.