Senior Program Manager II - Laser CommunicationsNew

Rocket Lab
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The opportunity

Rocket Lab is the end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems that keep the world connected, protected, expand humanity’s reach to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. We move fast, build real hardware for meaningful missions, and make the impossible routine.

What you'll do

  • Lead Delivery: Lead terminal programs from award through qualification, production at rate, delivery, and on-orbit checkout, across current-generation production and next-generation variants. Hold each program to its plan and deliver on schedule, technical performance, and every customer commitment.

  • Lead the Team of Teams: Run multiple concurrent customer programs, work closely with Chief Engineers on link performance, data rate, SWaP, environmental qualification, and optical terminal interoperability, and dive in personally on the problems that matter most to delivery.

  • Deliver at Rate: Own each program’s delivery profile and protect it. Spot yield, supplier, and test-capacity risk early and drive it to closure with Operations and the Product team.

  • Forge the Supply Chain: Partner with Supply Chain to manage critical suppliers as strategic partners, building the relationships and accountability that keep every customer delivery on schedule.

  • Run the Program Lifecycle: Own program startup and baselining, milestone and qualification reviews, export and ITAR obligations with Trade Compliance, customer acceptance, and closeout across our U.S. and European sites.

  • Champion the Customer: Be the trusted point of contact for customers through milestone reviews, interoperability campaigns, acceptance, and delivery. Partner with BD & Strategy on proposals and with the Product team on pricing and configuration, bringing the voice of the customer to every decision.

What they're looking for

  • Raise the Bar: Mentor the people around you, set a high standard for how we show up for customers, and help develop the program leaders who will run our next generation of laser communications programs.
  • Engineering Foundation: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, or Math.
  • Technical Depth: Working understanding of free-space optical or RF communications: link budgets, pointing, acquisition, and tracking, modems and coding, and space or airborne environmental qualification.
  • + years in space, aerospace, or photonics hardware programs, with multiple: full program cycles. We weight the hardest thing you’ve shipped over the count.