Senior Program Manager, Test Execution

Aurora•Pittsburgh, PA

4d•$100,000 - $145,000•Onsite

About The Position

Aurora's Product Operations team plays a critical role in turning development priorities into safe, executable testing outcomes. This role provides dedicated weekend and adjacent-day (Thursday - Monday) on-site coverage across all Development Testing Operations work-streams, ensuring engineering teams have consistent program management support. This Program Manager acts as the single point of contact for all assigned engineering areas during the weekend window, standing in for the full team of workstream PMs. You are the first line of defense for test execution questions and escalations, the direct escalation point for on-site issues, and the bridge to leadership when problems can't be resolved. This is functionally an irregular-operations (IROPs) role: the weekday team builds the plan, and you deliver it. The job isn't to wait for direction; it's to develop and work a known set of playbooks, make the call within defined limits, and know exactly when to pick up the phone to escalate. This role requires breadth over depth: rather than owning a single engineering relationship, you need working fluency across all the workstreams the team supports so you can triage confidently on your own during the window when the rest of the team is offline.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in Program Management, Project Management, Product Operations, Technical Operations, or a related role.
Demonstrated ability to operate independently and make sound first-tier decisions without real-time access to the full weekday team or leadership.
Working knowledge across multiple engineering/test workstreams, with the ability to quickly get oriented on unfamiliar issues.
Ability to develop a functional understanding of hardware/software stacks, including how sensors, calibration, and software versions interact to impact vehicle behavior.
Strong organizational and written/verbal communication skills, with comfort producing clear status reports and escalating to leadership when needed.
Safety focused, with the ability to operate effectively in environments where safety is a core requirement.
Required to work a Thursday–Monday schedule, including weekend on-site presence.
Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, evolving environment with shifting priorities and incomplete information.
Comfortable making resourceful, hands-on calls under incomplete information — improvising a workaround, reallocating an available asset, or adjusting a test sequence in the moment rather than escalating by default.

Nice To Haves

Experience covering or backstopping multiple PM workstreams simultaneously, or prior experience in a "floating" or on-call operational role.
Proven experience managing relationships and expectations with senior leadership, escalating appropriately without over- or under-escalating.
Comfort using basic data, dashboards, or reporting to support prioritization and execution decisions.
Experience in autonomous vehicles, automotive, robotics, logistics, or similarly complex operational environments.

Responsibilities

Serve as the direct escalation point for all Program Managers' workstreams during the Saturday-Sunday coverage window, resolving first-tier test execution questions and issues and looping in the right people (Engineering, Safety, Operations, leadership) when they exceed first-tier scope.
Own and execute pre-built response playbooks and flag gaps in those playbooks back to the weekday teams
Define and work within a decision-authority matrix: know without checking which calls you're empowered to make solo, which need a same-day heads-up to leadership, and which require an immediate escalation before proceeding.
Make real-time, hands-on calls on resource substitution — reassigning available assets, adjusting test sequencing, or re-routing around a blocked track/route — to keep the weekend plan moving without waiting for Monday.
Support test execution questions and escalations across the full breadth of engineering areas the team covers, not just a single workstream.
Review the previous week's plan against actual execution and author the weekly status/summary report on how the week went
Recommend and make pivots to the upcoming week's plan based on weekend execution results, blockers, and on-the-ground changes (weather, asset downtime, route/track issues).
Track and communicate blockers, delays, and anomalies to stakeholders in a timely manner, using judgment on when an issue needs to go straight to leadership versus being resolved at the PM level.
Maintain clear documentation of weekend decisions, pivots, and escalations so the Monday–Friday team has full continuity into the new week.
Contribute to a living contingency playbook: after each weekend, document any novel failure mode encountered and the resolution