Senior Program Manager, Hardware Issue Management

Atoms•San Francisco, CA

8d•$140,000 - $170,000•Onsite

About The Position

Atoms is seeking a Senior Program Manager to own hardware issue management for anomalies found during lab testing, on the production floor, and in the field, from intake through verified closure. This role involves running the intake and triage process, owning hardware issue tracking in Linear, and ensuring the record remains accurate as work progresses. It is a hands-on position based in the garage and test sites, requiring daily interaction with technicians, test operators, field engineers, and resolving engineers.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in an engineering or technical field is required, with 6+ years in program management, engineering program management, or a comparable role. Equivalent hands-on experience will be considered in place of the degree.
Demonstrated ownership of an issue or defect management process end to end, from intake through triage to verified closure, in a hardware or physical product environment.
Experience administering an issue tracker, including workflow design, taxonomy and label structure, permissions, templates, and reporting views (Linear, Jira, or equivalent).
Experience migrating a team or organization onto a tracker or internal system, including data migration, cutover, and driving adoption.
Track record of driving cross-functional issues to closure against committed dates.
Working knowledge of structured problem solving, including 8D, 5-Why, fishbone, and root cause and corrective action, sufficient to judge whether an investigation is complete.
Experience working directly with technicians, test operators, or field service teams.
Demonstrated experience designing an operational process and measuring adherence to it.
Data fluency sufficient to report on tracker and fleet data directly, in SQL against fleet data and GraphQL or scripting against a tracker API.
Strong written communication across process documentation, escalations, and status reporting, for technical and executive audiences.
Ability to work onsite five days a week in San Francisco, with regular time in the garage and some travel to test and deployment sites.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience configuring and administering Linear, including its API and automation rules.
Experience in autonomous vehicles, automotive, EV, robotics, aerospace, heavy equipment, or industrial machinery.
Prior work as an engineer, technician, or operator.

Responsibilities

Own all paths by which a hardware issue reaches engineering, covering the garage, lab and test benches, vehicles in service, and supplier and incoming inspection findings.
Own the structure and administration of hardware issue tracking in Linear, including teams and projects, workflow states, label groups, issue templates, intake forms and routing, sub-issue and blocking relationships, and saved views for each audience.
Run the daily recurring triage on incoming issues, setting severity and priority, distinguishing one-off issues from potential trends, and assigning a named owner, a next action, and a committed date to every open issue.
Drive issues through to verified closure with the responsible engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and field teams, defining closure evidence requirements and reopening issues as needed.
Maintain the operating process behind the tracker, including severity and priority definitions, escalation paths, and service levels for triage and closure.
Publish hardware issue status on a fixed cadence, covering open volume and aging, closure rate against inflow, top issues by severity and by frequency, and blocked items with named owners, escalated with a recommendation.
Use Linear's GraphQL API, integrations, and automation rules to reduce manual entry and keep the record current, including Slack intake, status sync, and reporting generated from the tracker.