Technical Program Manager - EV Charging Platform OCPP & NET Core

Zero Impact Solutions•Irvine, CA

3d•$95,000 - $120,000•Onsite

About The Position

Own delivery of the company’s cloud Charging Station Management System (CSMS), a .NET Core platform that supports thousands of DC fast chargers and Level 2 stations across multiple hardware manufacturers. The role is accountable for the technical roadmap, interoperability, reliability, and timely delivery of a platform that communicates with chargers over long-lived WebSocket connections and supports OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1. This is a hands-on technical program role involving protocol-log analysis, architecture reviews, vendor-deviation decisions, and translation of utility, regulatory, and customer requirements into engineering milestones. The Technical Program Manager serves as the single point of accountability for the roadmap and as the primary technical interface among engineering, hardware and firmware partners, QA and certification, field operations, commercial teams, charger manufacturers, CPOs, eMSPs, and enterprise fleet customers. The position leads program strategy and release planning; OCPP implementation, charger onboarding, conformance, and migration; engineering and architecture partnership; risk, quality, and incident management; vendor and customer coordination; security and compliance work; and operational delivery. It also develops program documentation and coaches engineers and junior program managers on protocol fluency and structured problem solving. The role is based in person at the Costa Mesa, California office, with an eight-hour Monday–Friday schedule. Candidates must reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting.

Requirements

At least 7 years in technical program or engineering management roles delivering backend or IoT platforms, including at least 3 years in EV charging, energy, telematics, or connected-device systems.
Working fluency in OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1, including the ability to analyze message traces, identify BootNotification, Heartbeat, or StatusNotification issues, explain the OCPP 2.0.1 Transaction lifecycle, and describe Smart Charging profile stacking.
Strong understanding of .NET Core/C# backend systems, including ASP.NET Core, asynchronous programming, dependency injection, and microservice decomposition trade-offs.
Hands-on experience with WebSocket-based, long-lived connection systems at scale, including reconnection, message ordering, idempotency, and offline queuing.
Cloud-platform experience with Azure preferred or AWS acceptable, including managed Kubernetes or container services, message brokers, managed databases, and observability tools.
Demonstrated success delivering multi-quarter programs with hardware dependencies, including vendor management and certification or compliance gates.
Structured risk-management skills, including maintaining a live risk register, quantifying impact, and escalating early with options.
Clear written and verbal communication with technical and non-technical audiences, including firmware engineers, executives, and customer procurement teams.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Ability to reliably commute to or relocate to Costa Mesa, California before starting work.

Nice To Haves

OCPI 2.2.1 roaming integrations with eMSPs and roaming hubs such as Hubject or Gireve, including tariff, CDR, and session modules.
ISO 15118-2 or ISO 15118-20 and Plug & Charge experience, including certificate pools, contract certificates, and the CSMS role in the Plug & Charge ecosystem.
Prior OCA certification delivery, including plugfest participation or operating a lab with charger simulators and test tools.
DC fast-charging hardware knowledge, including power modules, dispenser/cabinet configurations, CCS1 and NACS (SAE J3400) connectors, dynamic power sharing, and load management.
Utility and grid-program experience, including OpenADR demand response, managed-charging tariffs, demand subscription rates, and interconnection or make-ready processes.
Familiarity with NEVI/CFI uptime and reporting requirements, state incentive programs, and LCFS or similar clean-fuel credit reporting that depends on metering accuracy.
EV charging payments and billing experience, including credit-card terminals, pre-authorization, EMV, and kWh- versus time-based pricing.
Experience with Azure IoT Hub, Service Bus or Event Hubs, Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL or SQL Server, and time-series storage for meter data.
Fleet-depot charging experience, including schedule-driven charging, vehicle telematics integration, and uptime SLAs for commercial fleets.
Awareness of OCPP 2.1 and its implications for bidirectional charging and DER integration.
PMP, PgMP, SAFe, or equivalent program-management certification.

Responsibilities

Own the CSMS technical roadmap, including program scope, phase gates, success criteria, release cadence, and alignment with commercial commitments and regulatory deadlines.
Translate business, customer, and regulatory requirements into engineering epics, acceptance criteria, and estimable milestones.
Run quarterly planning, weekly program reviews, release go/no-go decisions, and leadership status, risk, and decision communications.
Prioritize charger onboarding, customer integrations, protocol upgrades, and platform reliability with explicit trade-offs.
Oversee OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1 implementation and conformance across supported profiles and functional blocks.
Own charger onboarding and certification plans by manufacturer and firmware version, run interoperability testing, and approve charger models for field deployment.
Maintain the known-deviations register and decide whether vendor firmware deviations warrant a platform workaround, vendor fix, or rejection of support.
Lead the installed-base migration from OCPP 1.6J to 2.0.1, including dual-protocol operation, security profile upgrades, and firmware rollout sequencing.
Coordinate OCA plugfest participation and third-party conformance testing, and track OCPP 2.1 and ISO 15118-20 readiness.
Partner with .NET Core architects on event-driven microservices capable of handling large numbers of concurrent WebSocket sessions, MeterValues ingestion, and transaction processing.
Set and enforce non-functional requirements for connection stability, message latency, offline transaction recovery, horizontal scalability, observability, and multi-region failover.
Review technical designs for protocol correctness, backward compatibility, and operational risk before implementation.
Ensure the platform exposes clean, versioned APIs for customer portals, mobile apps, fleet-management systems, payment processors, and OCPI partners.
Identify and mitigate hardware-to-cloud compatibility risks, firmware-update bottlenecks, certificate expiry, and cross-team dependencies.
Own the incident review process for protocol-related outages, including root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and roadmap changes where needed.
Define release quality standards, including automated OCPP conformance tests, charger-simulator load tests, staged rollouts, and rollback criteria.
Track and report platform KPIs, including charger uptime, session success, transaction reconciliation accuracy, charger-model onboarding time, and firmware campaign completion.
Serve as the primary technical interface for charger manufacturers, firmware vendors, utilities, CPOs, eMSPs, and enterprise fleet customers.
Negotiate technical scope, timelines, and acceptance criteria with vendors; monitor delivery and escalate delays with supporting evidence.
Lead customer-facing technical onboarding for large deployments, including integration design, cutover plans, pilot acceptance, and hypercare.
Coordinate hardware certification and compliance workstreams, including UL/ETL listing, Energy Star, NEVI/CFI requirements, utility make-ready, and demand-response integrations.
Own the OCPP 2.0.1 security program, including security profiles 1–3, certificate lifecycle management, secure firmware signing, and secure event logging.
Ensure the platform addresses payment security, data privacy, and contractual security requirements; coordinate penetration testing and remediation.
Maintain audit-grade metering, transaction, and firmware-version records for LCFS and utility incentive reporting.
Run the release train, including sprint rituals, release notes, change management, and coordination with field operations for firmware campaigns and maintenance windows.
Create and maintain integration guides, charger compatibility matrices, runbooks, and decision logs.
Coach engineers and junior program managers on protocol fluency and structured problem solving, and improve the team’s understanding of charger behavior in the field.