Technical Program Manager, Flight Software

K2 Space • Los Angeles, CA

6d • Onsite

About The Position

K2 is seeking a Technical Program Manager embedded with its Flight and Ground Software teams to own and maintain the schedule for software across satellite programs. The software spans embedded code on microcontrollers as well as cloud-based ground and operations services, and is on the critical path for many mission milestones. The role works day to day with software engineering leads to maintain development schedules, coordinate dependencies with hardware and test milestones, identify risks and blockers, and provide leadership and program stakeholders with a clear view of software status. It focuses on providing engineers with structure, cadence, and visibility rather than writing code. The position is onsite at K2’s Torrance office.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 5 years of technical program or project management experience working directly with software engineering teams, ideally on embedded, flight, or other high-reliability software.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain detailed schedules, track dependencies, and keep a software team on track against firm external milestones such as integration, test, and launch dates.
• Technical fluency to work closely with software engineers and understand what is actually blocking progress.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to give leadership a clear and honest schedule picture without diluting or overstating risk.
• Comfort operating in a fast-paced environment with aggressive timelines, shifting priorities, and high ambiguity.

Nice To Haves

• Experience program-managing flight software, embedded software, or firmware for aerospace, satellite, or other high-reliability systems.
• Background as a software engineer or in a technical role sufficient to critically review schedules and ask the team appropriate questions.
• Familiarity with modern software program tools such as Jira, Confluence, Git-based workflows, and CI/CD, and experience building schedule or status dashboards.
• Experience coordinating software milestones against hardware integration and test schedules on a multidisciplinary program.
• Experience supporting resource and capacity planning for an engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the software development schedule, including sprint and release plans, integration milestones, and dependencies on hardware, test, and other software subsystems.
• Track progress against the schedule, identify slips early, and drive resolution of blockers with responsible engineers and leads.
• Coordinate flight and ground software milestones, including integration drops, flight readiness reviews, and customer emulators, with systems, avionics, AI&T, and mission operations.
• Maintain the flight software risk register, identify emerging risks, drive mitigation plans, and escalate schedule or scope decisions to leadership when appropriate.
• Run and facilitate recurring flight software program reviews and planning sessions, keeping them focused, actionable, and tied to schedule commitments.
• Translate engineering status into clear, concise updates for engineering leadership, program management, and customers, tailoring detail to the audience.
• Partner with software leads to right-size ticketing, sprint cadence, and release-planning processes so schedule tracking scales without slowing engineers down.
• Support resource and capacity planning for the flight software team and help forecast staffing needs against upcoming program milestones.
• Continuously improve team planning and work-tracking as K2 scales production across multiple concurrent satellite programs.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical, dental, and vision coverage, life insurance, paid parental leave, and other perks.
• Equity in the company.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level