Technical Program Manager - EV Charging Platform OCPP & NET Core

Zero Impact Solutions•Huntington Beach, CA

3d•$95,000 - $120,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Technical Program Manager owns delivery of the company’s cloud Charging Station Management System (CSMS), a .NET Core platform supporting DC fast chargers and Level 2 stations from multiple manufacturers. The platform must operate reliably at scale over long-lived WebSocket connections, support accurate billing, and conform to OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1. This is a hands-on technical program role involving protocol logs, architecture reviews, vendor firmware deviations, and translating utility, regulatory, and customer requirements into engineering milestones. The role is the single point of accountability for the platform roadmap and field interoperability. The position works across backend engineering, firmware and hardware partners, QA and certification, field operations, and commercial teams. It serves as the primary technical interface to charger manufacturers, charge point operators, e-mobility service providers, and enterprise fleet customers. The role owns program strategy and roadmap, OCPP implementation and interoperability, engineering partnership, risk and quality management, stakeholder and vendor relationships, security and compliance, and delivery and operations. The position is based in person at the Costa Mesa, California office, with an 8-hour Monday–Friday schedule. Applicants 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 reading message traces, diagnosing BootNotification, Heartbeat, and StatusNotification issues, explaining the 2.0.1 Transaction lifecycle, and describing Smart Charging profile interactions.
Strong understanding of .NET Core/C# backend systems, including ASP.NET Core, asynchronous programming, dependency injection, and microservice decomposition trade-offs; production coding is not required, but the candidate must participate effectively in design reviews.
Hands-on experience with scalable, WebSocket-based long-lived connection systems, including reconnection, message ordering, idempotency, and offline queuing.
Cloud platform experience with Azure preferred and AWS acceptable, including managed Kubernetes or container services, message brokers, managed databases, and observability tooling.
Demonstrated record of delivering multi-quarter programs with hardware dependencies, 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 for technical, executive, and customer procurement audiences.
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, CA 92626 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/-20 and Plug & Charge experience, including certificate pools, contract certificates, and the CSMS role in the PnC ecosystem.
Prior OCA certification delivery, plugfest participation, or experience running 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.
Regulatory and incentive familiarity, including NEVI/CFI uptime and reporting requirements, state incentive programs, and LCFS or similar clean-fuel credit reporting dependent 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 commercial fleet uptime SLAs.
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 epics, acceptance criteria, and estimable engineering milestones.
Run quarterly planning, weekly program reviews, and release go/no-go decisions; report status, risks, and decisions to leadership.
Prioritize charger onboarding, customer integrations, protocol upgrades, and platform reliability with explicit trade-offs.
Oversee implementation and conformance of OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1 across supported profiles and functional blocks.
Own charger onboarding and certification, including manufacturer and firmware certification matrices, interoperability test plans, and field-deployment approval.
Maintain a register of vendor firmware deviations and determine whether to implement platform workarounds, request vendor fixes, or decline support.
Lead the OCPP 1.6J-to-2.0.1 migration plan, including dual-protocol operation, security profile upgrades, and firmware rollout sequencing.
Coordinate OCA plugfest participation and third-party conformance testing; track OCPP 2.1 and ISO 15118-20 readiness.
Partner with .NET Core architects on event-driven microservices supporting concurrent WebSocket sessions, MeterValues ingestion, and transaction handling.
Set and enforce non-functional requirements for connection stability, message latency, offline transaction recovery, scalability, observability, and multi-region failover.
Review technical designs for protocol correctness, backward compatibility, and operational risk.
Ensure the platform provides 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.
Lead protocol-related incident reviews, including root cause analysis, corrective actions, and roadmap changes when needed.
Define release quality bars, including automated OCPP conformance tests, charger-simulator load tests, and staged rollouts with rollback criteria.
Track and report charger uptime, session success rate, transaction reconciliation accuracy, time to onboard charger models, 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; track delivery and escalate delays with 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 meets payment, 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 field-operations coordination for firmware campaigns and maintenance windows.
Build and maintain integration guides, charger compatibility matrices, runbooks, and a decision log.
Coach engineers and junior program managers on protocol fluency and structured problem solving, and improve the team’s understanding of field charger behavior.