Director / Sr. Director, R&D Operations & Technical Program Management

Subsense • Palo Alto, CA

6d

About The Position

Subsense is seeking a Director / Sr. Director, R&D Operations & Technical Program Management to build and manage the execution operating system for its R&D organization. This role will report to the Head of R&D and work closely with the CEO and leadership team to accelerate complex R&D execution, create clarity, and improve team velocity through enhanced visibility and reduced coordination drag. The ideal candidate will act as a trusted execution partner, translating ambitious technical goals into a functional operating system with clear priorities, visible dependencies, early identification of blockers, focused decision-making, and disciplined follow-through. This position requires a blend of technical fluency, strong execution discipline, emotional intelligence, and the judgment to implement structures that support, rather than disrupt, technical focus time.

Requirements

• Proven experience managing complex technical programs, R&D initiatives, or multidisciplinary technical projects.
• Strong technical fluency with the ability to quickly understand and connect concepts across multiple scientific and engineering domains.
• Experience operating in fast-moving, ambiguous environments with shifting priorities and evolving playbooks.
• Ability to influence senior technical individuals without formal authority.
• Strong execution discipline, including ownership of milestones, dependencies, risks, decisions, and follow-through.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills: clear, concise, direct, and trusted by both technical teams and leadership.
• Strong judgment regarding when to convene meetings, handle alignment asynchronously, and escalate issues.
• Ability to create practical operating systems that improve efficiency while protecting technical focus time.
• Low-ego, high-accountability working style.
• Fluent spoken and written English.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in neuroscience, biotech, medtech, nanotechnology, hardware, robotics, materials science, complex systems, or another deep-tech environment.
• Experience in a regulated product environment.
• Experience working on company-critical, board-level, investor-facing, or fundraising-critical milestones.
• Experience working directly with founders, executives, scientists, and engineering leaders.
• Prior experience in a seed-stage or high-growth startup.
• Scientific or engineering background.

Responsibilities

• Building, maintaining, and driving adoption of a clear R&D execution plan across priority workstreams.
• Creating a clear weekly overview of R&D activities, including what is happening, what is blocked, what has changed, decisions needed, and milestone progress.
• Partnering closely with the Head of R&D to protect leadership time and ensure focus on strategic, scientific, and technical priorities.
• Translating complex R&D work into clear execution visibility for leadership without oversimplifying technical realities.
• Tracking owners, milestones, dependencies, risks, decisions, and next actions across critical technical programs.
• Surfacing blockers, trade-offs, and dependency risks early for timely resolution.
• Helping team leads operate from a single, shared execution plan without introducing unnecessary process or meetings.
• Designing lightweight operating rhythms that respect lab time, experiment windows, and deep technical work.
• Utilizing async updates, consolidated reporting, decision logs, and focused meetings to reduce coordination burden.
• Coordinating across science, engineering, hardware, software, regulatory, operations, and leadership as needed.
• Helping leadership quickly assess the status of company-critical and fundraising-critical milestones.

Benefits

• Work on a non-surgical BCI platform at the intersection of neuroscience, nanotechnology, AI, and hardware.
• Opportunity to define the operating system behind a frontier technology company.
• Help build the execution foundation for the next era of human–machine interaction.
• Equal-opportunity employer.
• Celebration of diversity and commitment to an inclusive environment.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed