Staff Operations Program Manager

Mountain View, CAfull timeOn Site

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senior

$149k–$220k

H1B: yes

Lightmatter The Staff Operations Program Manager at Lightmatter owns the operational program management for supplier execution and master build planning across multiple manufacturing tiers. This role ensures material availability and vendor milestone enforcement for photonic engine production.

Responsibilities

Core Responsibilities
Serve as the senior operational leader owning the complete material development lifecycle from NPI through HVM. You will act as the primary operations counterpart to engineering and quality teams, collaborating directly with external vendors to ensure all hardware materials are realized and available to support the master schedule.
Drive end-to-end operational execution for assigned electro-optical program lines by aligning customer and internal demand into master build plans spanning silicon foundries, OSATs, and Contract Manufacturers.
Build and maintain virtual line-item Clear-To-Build (CTB) matrices across multi-tier suppliers. You will track component lead times and drive consigned material staging into OSAT and CM facilities to guarantee unblocked build execution.
Partner with engineering leads to draft, enforce, and track vendor Statements of Work. You will conduct weekly operational progress reviews, hold suppliers accountable to milestone deliverables, and drive overall vendor execution metrics.
Actively track and resolve critical-path dependencies that impact external manufacturing, driving internal teams to provide the design freeze sign-offs, ECO cut-ins, and test scripts required by vendor partners to proceed with production.
Maintain transparent milestone risk logs, material readiness trackers, and build progress dashboards to consistently communicate program status and critical path risks to executive leadership with actionable mitigation plans.
Own PLM workflows across the product lifecycle, which includes creating and managing Bills of Materials and directly managing the routing and approval of Engineering Change Orders.

Qualification

Bachelor's degree in Supply ChainExecutive presence

Required

Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Business Management, Engineering, or a related field, complemented by relevant operational experience.
8+ years of progressive experience in Operations Program Management or Partner Operations within high-tech hardware, semiconductors, optical networking, or silicon photonics.
Proven track record directly managing external manufacturing partners, contract manufacturers, silicon foundries, or OSATs through complex NPI-to-HVM build cycles.
Advanced expertise constructing multi-tier master schedules, tracking material availability, and enforcing line-item CTB matrices across multi-stage assembly flows.
Executive presence, influence, and assertiveness necessary to drive both internal engineering teams and external partner program managers to strict milestone dates.
Hands-on experience executing BOM management, ECO routing, and revision control within PLM systems, alongside working within ERP/MRP environments.

Preferred

A Master’s degree in Supply Chain Management, Industrial Engineering, or a technical discipline is strongly preferred.
Highly value direct experience managing operational supplier partnerships specifically in electro-optical packaging, silicon photonics, high-speed optical transceivers, or AI compute hardware.
Desire a deep understanding of multi-tier semiconductor transitions, from wafer sort through advanced packaging to final module assembly.
Hands-on experience executing BOM management, ECO routing, and revision control within PLM software (e.g., Arena, Agile, Teamcenter, or similar).