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Salary: USD 125,000 - 190,000 / annual
Kodiak Robotics is seeking a Hardware Technical Program Manager to lead the development and execution of hardware programs across its autonomous vehicle product lines: Industrial, Over the Road, and Defense. Founded in 2018, Kodiak has become a leader in autonomous ground transportation, delivering freight daily using its AI-powered technology stack for commercial trucking and the public sector. In 2024, Kodiak became the first known company to publicly announce delivering a driverless semi-truck to a customer and is also developing autonomous capabilities for the U.S. Department of Defense.
In this role, you will create technical execution roadmaps across engineering teams, tying features and dependencies to timelines while tracking cross-team dependencies. You will manage and optimize development and integration efforts for the current hardware platform, ensuring stability and performance as the company scales. Key responsibilities include managing program progress to meet objectives, defining schedules, milestones, and resource allocation, and communicating status and priorities across all organizational levels.
You will work closely with Hardware, Software, Systems, and Operations teams to ensure cross-functional deliverables are delivered on time and to quality standards. You will prioritize and manage issues, risks, and dependencies, resolving barriers to program advancement. You will support decision-making by clearly communicating risks and tradeoffs to stakeholders, develop tools and processes to improve manufacturing productivity, and maintain strong technical understanding of autonomous vehicle platforms, hardware lifecycle, safety clearance processes, and test operations.
The role is based in Mountain View, CA, with presence in the office required for collaboration and some travel expected.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 5+ years of Technical Program Management experience
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Engineering, or similar technical field
- Experience managing fast-paced initiatives with multiple stakeholders, complex schedules, and priority decisions
- Strong bias for action
- Experience in automotive or trucking industry (bonus: hardware programs on autonomous vehicles)
- Experience in startup environment managing hardware projects toward manufacturing at scale
- Expertise in project management tools (Linear, JIRA, Smartsheet, LucidChart)
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; ability to facilitate tradeoffs between engineering and product requirements while maintaining high safety standards
- Passion for autonomous vehicles and their potential impact
