Technical Project Manager

Backburner Labs•St Paul, MN

12d•Hybrid

About The Position

At Backburner Labs, our engineers design and build things that often did not exist before a customer brought us the problem. The Technical Project Manager helps ensure we solve the right problem, take the right technical path, and bring together the people and perspectives needed to turn an idea into something real. This role works across mechanical, electrical, software, controls, manufacturing, customers, and company leadership. You do not need to be the deepest technical expert in every discipline. You do need to speak engineer, understand how complex physical systems come together, and contribute meaningfully to early concepts and technical discussions. Strong mechanical intuition, systems thinking, and experience with machines, products, or electromechanical systems would be especially valuable. There is rarely one obvious way to solve the problems our customers bring us. You will help teams evaluate possibilities, understand tradeoffs, challenge assumptions, and find the best path forward. From there, you will create the clarity, communication, and momentum needed to move the project through design, development, testing, manufacturing, and delivery. Backburner Labs is scaling quickly, and not every system or process is fully built. You will inherit some useful practices, improve others, and create what is missing. If you need a mature corporate playbook or a template for every situation, this probably is not the right role. If you enjoy working through ambiguity and building the structure a growing company needs, it may be exactly what you are looking for.

Requirements

Broadly technical, naturally curious, and comfortable moving between engineering disciplines.
Deeper expertise in mechanical engineering, machine design, manufacturing, physical product development, or another technical field, with a desire to understand how the entire system works.
Confident enough to offer a point of view without assuming yours is the only answer.
Ability to ask good questions, listen to technical experts, challenge assumptions respectfully, and help groups reach better decisions.
Genuinely good with people; ability to interact with customers, engineers, technicians, leaders, suppliers, and outside partners.
Clear communication, sound judgment, self-awareness, and the ability to build trust.
Experience leading complex engineering, product-development, automation, equipment, or manufacturing projects.
Experience working across mechanical, electrical, software, controls, or manufacturing disciplines.
Experience moving an early or incomplete concept toward a delivered product, machine, system, or production process.
Experience working directly with customers and communicating technical tradeoffs, risks, changes, and decisions.
Evidence of building processes or creating structure, not only working within systems created by someone else.
Comfort managing scope, schedules, budgets, resources, dependencies, and competing priorities.

Nice To Haves

Strong mechanical intuition, systems thinking, and experience with machines, products, or electromechanical systems.

Responsibilities

Lead multidisciplinary engineering projects from early concept and planning through customer delivery.
Bring engineering, manufacturing, customer, and business perspectives together to evaluate options and establish a practical technical direction.
Create clarity around scope, priorities, ownership, schedules, budgets, risks, and next steps, even when the starting point is incomplete or changing.
Serve as a central point of communication among customers, engineers, company leadership, suppliers, and other project stakeholders.
Recognize when a project is drifting, assumptions need to be challenged, or the team may be solving the wrong problem, and help redirect the work constructively.
Build and improve practical project-management processes, reporting, documentation, and KPIs as Backburner Labs grows.