VP, Commercial Program Management

Parallel Systems•Los Angeles, CA

21h

About The Position

Parallel Systems is developing autonomous, battery-electric rail vehicles to transform freight transportation. The VP of Commercial Program Management is accountable for converting signed commercial contracts into successful, revenue-generating customer operations. Reporting to the Chief Commercial Officer, this leader will own deployments from contract signature through go-live and steady-state operations, coordinating internal functions and external stakeholders around an integrated plan. The role will build the commercial program management function from the ground up, hire and develop program managers, and establish a repeatable deployment playbook. The successful candidate will lead execution across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, safety, regulatory, field operations, and customer success; maintain strong customer relationships; and ensure deployments meet contractual commitments.

Requirements

12+ years of experience in program management, deployment, or delivery leadership, including 5+ years leading cross-functional programs at director level or above.
Track record of taking complex hardware, infrastructure, or physical-technology systems from contract to field deployment with external customers.
Experience coordinating multiple internal functions and external parties, including customers, vendors, contractors, and regulators, against contractual milestones.
Experience building or scaling a program or deployment management function, including hiring and developing program managers.
Comfort presenting to and negotiating with customer executives and the candidate's own executive team.
Strong command of integrated schedules, risk management, change control, and program financials.
Ability to travel to customer and deployment sites as needed.

Nice To Haves

Experience in rail, freight, logistics, ports, autonomous vehicles, energy, or other heavily regulated infrastructure industries.
Experience at a growth-stage or venture-backed hard-tech company, especially taking first-of-a-kind deployments live.
Background working with safety cases, regulatory approvals, or operating permits as part of a deployment.
Engineering degree or technical background.
PMP or similar certification.
Prior experience in a commercial or customer-facing leadership role alongside delivery ownership.

Responsibilities

Own customer deployments from contract signature through go-live and steady-state operations as the single accountable leader across internal and external teams.
Translate contract commitments, including scope, milestones, service-level agreements, and acceptance criteria, into an integrated master plan spanning relevant functions.
Run a structured contract-to-deployment handoff to ensure execution aligns with the partnership agreement.
Coordinate customers, railroad and port partners, infrastructure and charging vendors, contractors, and regulators against a shared timeline.
Build and lead the commercial program management function, including hiring and developing program managers and scaling the team.
Create and maintain the deployment playbook, including stage gates, readiness reviews, RACI, risk registers, change control, and standard templates.
Identify risks, dependencies, and resource conflicts early; drive tradeoff decisions with functional leaders and escalate clear options to the executive team.
Own deployment reporting, including portfolio dashboards, milestone health, schedule and budget variance, and customer-facing status updates.
Partner with Engineering and Product to feed field learnings into the roadmap, and with Finance on deployment costs, margin, and revenue recognition milestones.
Serve as a trusted senior counterpart to customer executives throughout delivery, protecting customer relationships and supporting expansion.