Principal Technical Program Manager - 2290

Kioxia • Folsom, CA

2d • $155,420 - $259,030

About The Position

KIOXIA America is seeking a Principal Technical Program Manager to join the SSD Business Unit Program Management Office. This senior individual-contributor role provides program leadership for the organization’s most complex, high-impact, and strategically important SSD initiatives, from product definition through development, qualification, high-volume manufacturing, customer readiness, sustaining, and end of life.

Based within KIOXIA America, the Principal TPM serves as a senior program integration leader between the U.S. subsidiary and KIOXIA’s global headquarters in Japan. The role brings together Engineering, Firmware, Validation, Quality & Reliability, Product Line Management, Technical Product Management, Customer Technical Support, Business Development, Operations, and other stakeholders. It is accountable for driving execution across organizational boundaries, including integrated schedules, critical paths, cross-program dependencies, strategic risks, decisions, actions, and executive escalation.

The successful candidate combines deep SSD technical knowledge with exceptional program and organizational leadership. They operate autonomously in ambiguous environments, anticipate systemic issues and dependencies, understand how decisions across hardware, firmware, NAND, controller/ASIC, validation, qualification, manufacturing, and customer enablement affect the broader product portfolio, and influence senior and executive leaders to drive predictable business outcomes.

Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in complex hardware/software product development, semiconductor, storage, memory, or an equivalent technical product environment.
• Extensive technical program or project leadership experience delivering large, highly complex, business-critical product development and New Product Introduction programs.
• Demonstrated experience leading programs spanning multiple organizations, technical disciplines, product dependencies, and senior stakeholders.
• Expert ability to build and govern integrated schedules, critical paths, cross-program dependencies, risk portfolios, milestones, and recovery strategies.
• Deep understanding of SSD architecture and development, including controller/ASIC, NAND, DRAM, firmware, hardware, validation, qualification, reliability, manufacturing, and customer enablement.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior and executive stakeholders and lead highly matrixed organizations without direct reporting authority.
• Proven ability to frame and drive difficult decisions, resolve significant ambiguity, and balance technical, customer, business, resource, quality, and schedule tradeoffs.
• Strong systems thinking and analytical problem-solving skills, including the ability to identify patterns and systemic risks across programs.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including executive-level program assessment, recommendations, decision framing, and escalation.
• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline required.
• Master’s degree in Engineering or a related discipline preferred.
• Experience with modern program tracking, analytics, and dashboard tools such as Jira and Power BI or equivalent platforms.

Nice To Haves

• Experience coordinating between a U.S. organization and global headquarters in Japan.
• Direct experience leading enterprise or data-center SSD product development and qualification programs of significant scale and complexity.
• Experience with SSD New Product Introduction, development build planning, qualification, transition to high-volume manufacturing, and customer deployment.
• Deep familiarity with semiconductor product lifecycles and vertically integrated development environments.
• Experience defining and scaling PMO operating mechanisms, governance, lifecycle gates, portfolio planning, and executive reporting across an organization.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor senior program managers and influence execution practices across multiple teams or programs.
• Track record of identifying systemic organizational or execution challenges and leading durable cross-functional improvements.
• Ability to use data-driven automation and reporting to surface exceptions, schedule movement, cross-program dependencies, and emerging risks.
• Master’s degree in Engineering or a related discipline.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end execution of the most complex and strategically important SSD programs, potentially spanning multiple products, customers, development teams, and product generations.
• Serve as a senior cross-functional program leader, establishing alignment on objectives, priorities, execution strategy, success criteria, lifecycle gates, and exit criteria.
• Build and govern integrated program schedules covering key milestones, critical paths, cross-program dependencies, qualification, customer readiness, and manufacturing deliverables.
• Anticipate systemic risks and dependencies across programs and drive mitigation and recovery strategies before they materially affect customers or business commitments.
• Lead resolution of highly complex technical and business tradeoffs involving scope, architecture, resources, quality, schedule, customer requirements, and business priorities.
• Establish effective Core Team operating mechanisms focused on program health, critical decisions, actions, risks, dependencies, and escalations rather than functional status reporting.
• Drive accountability across functional and organizational boundaries for agreed deliverables, milestones, decisions, actions, and boundary agreements.
• Provide clear, fact-based program assessments, recommendations, and decision frameworks to senior and executive leadership.
• Coordinate effectively between KIOXIA America and KIOXIA’s global headquarters in Japan, influencing senior stakeholders across organizations, geographies, disciplines, and time zones.
• Drive product development and qualification readiness across SSD builds, firmware maturity, validation, issue resolution, manufacturing, and customer qualification dependencies.
• Resolve ambiguous blockers and drive high-impact decisions to closure with clear owners, dates, rationale, and measurable outcomes.
• Partner with PMO, engineering, and product leadership to define and evolve program governance, lifecycle/gate processes, integrated planning, dashboards, decision mechanisms, and portfolio execution practices.
• Identify systemic execution gaps across the SSD portfolio and lead cross-organizational improvements that increase delivery predictability, execution efficiency, and transparency.
• Mentor technical program managers and cross-functional leaders, establishing best practices and raising program-management capability across the organization.
• Champion data-driven program management and automation to improve program visibility, identify emerging schedule or risk changes, and reduce manual status reporting.
• Capture and institutionalize lessons learned so improvements strengthen future product execution.

Benefits

• Opportunities for career growth and personal development training.
• Open-minded management that empowers employees by listening and responding to ideas, issues, and approaches.
• Flexible work-life balance, generous PTO allotment, holiday shutdown, and flexible work options.
• Excellent medical and non-medical benefits.
• 401(k) matching.
• Pet insurance.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal