Sr Customer Program Manager - 2245

Kioxia•San Jose, CA

3h•$124,440 - $207,400

About The Position

The Senior Customer Program Manager (Sr. CPM) is the accountable program owner for assigned strategic customer accounts across all qualification and sustaining activities. This role maintains comprehensive ownership of the customer’s product portfolio — including legacy products in sustaining, active Pre-JQ and JQ programs, and future roadmap introductions. The Sr. CPM serves as the primary point of contact between the customer and KIOXIA for qualification-related matters, ensuring structured planning, disciplined execution, and consistent communication throughout the product lifecycle. While CSE, JQE, and CQE teams execute technical validation and quality activities, the Sr. CPM owns program coordination, milestone control, and alignment to customer acceptance requirements. This is a senior-level role defined by scope, complexity of account ownership, customer-facing leadership, and independent program control.

Requirements

6–10+ years of experience in program or project management within enterprise hardware, firmware, storage, or semiconductor environments.
Demonstrated experience managing multi-generation product portfolios within a strategic customer account.
Proven experience serving as the primary customer-facing lead for structured technical programs.
Strong understanding of NVMe and/or SAS product lifecycles and firmware release workflows.
Advanced competency in schedule management, dependency tracking, and risk forecasting.
Strong communication and presentation skills with the ability to synthesize complex technical updates into structured program reporting.
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, or related field (or equivalent experience).

Responsibilities

End-to-End Customer Product Portfolio Ownership
Own the complete qualification roadmap for assigned accounts, including:
Sustaining products (past generations)
Active Pre-JQ and JQ programs
Future product introductions aligned to customer roadmaps
Maintain a master, forward-looking qualification plan covering all product generations.
Ensure continuity across firmware revisions, sustaining updates, and next-generation transitions.
Track product lifecycle status and customer adoption progression.
Primary Qualification Interface Between Customer and KIOXIA
Act as the single program owner for all Pre-JQ, JQ, and sustaining qualification communications.
Lead all recurring customer program meetings related to qualification and sustaining activities.
Establish structured agendas, document key decisions, and ensure follow-through on action items.
Coordinate internal updates across Sales, Engineering, and CTS while maintaining ownership of qualification messaging.
Ensure consistent, accurate, and timely communication of milestones, risks, and deliverables.
Subject Matter Expertise on Customer Product Requirements
Develop deep understanding of:
Products qualified or planned by the customer
Customer-specific platform requirements
Acceptance criteria and validation gates
Firmware constraints and integration dependencies
Serve as the internal CTS subject matter expert on customer qualification expectations.
Validate that CSE, JQE, and CQE activities align with defined customer acceptance requirements.
Identify and resolve requirement misalignments before they impact qualification schedules.
Qualification Planning & Execution Control
Build and maintain the master qualification schedule integrating:
Customer timelines
Engineering release checkpoints
Firmware readiness gates
Sample planning and delivery sequencing
Identify and manage critical path dependencies.
Coordinate Pre-JQ, JQ, and Post-Sales sample planning and tracking.
Provide milestone forecasting and schedule confidence assessments.
Risk Management & Escalation
Maintain a structured risk register for assigned accounts.
Proactively identify risks related to:
Firmware readiness
Validation timing
Sample availability
Sustaining stability
Customer schedule shifts
Lead mitigation planning within CTS and escalate appropriately when required.
Provide clear impact assessments tied to qualification timing and customer commitments.
Executive & Account-Level Reporting
Develop and maintain dashboards summarizing:
Qualification status across all active and sustaining products
Milestone adherence
Risk posture and mitigation status
Sample readiness
Prepare milestone reviews for CTS leadership.
Create customer-facing milestone trackers that accurately reflect program status.
Collaboration Within CTS
The Sr. CPM integrates and aligns execution across:
Customer Support Engineers (CSE): Align technical debug, firmware updates, and readiness status with qualification milestones.
Joint Qualification Engineers (JQE): Integrate regression testing timelines and qualification execution progress into the master schedule.
Customer Quality Engineers (CQE): Ensure quality metrics, FA reporting inputs, and compliance documentation align with sustaining and qualification gates.
The Sr. CPM does not perform technical validation work but ensures proper sequencing, visibility, and coordination across functions.

Benefits

Investment in you
Offering opportunities for career growth and personal development training
Open-minded management
Empowering employees by listening and responding to ideas, issues, and approaches
Flexible work-life balance
Offering a generous PTO allotment, holiday shutdown, and flexible work options
Diversity of cultures, perspectives, backgrounds and experiences of all our team members
Through our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, our focus is to strengthen our company culture to create more inclusion and belonging for all
Benefits for our team members
Excellent medical and non-medical benefits, 401(k) matching, pet insurance