Technical Project Lead — Engineering

Location :
Santa Barbara, CA

Salary : $140,000 — $185,000

Bonus : 5-10% bonus

The Technical Project Lead owns the end‑to‑end execution of one or more new‑product programs and carries the technical authority to make the trade‑offs that keep them on track.

This is not a coordination‑only role. Where a Program Manager is responsible for schedule and logistics, the TPL is accountable for the technical outcome — the architecture decisions, the risk posture, and whether the product actually works and ships. You’ll be the one person who can answer “where is this program, what’s blocking it, and what are we doing about it” at any moment.

• Drive NPD programs through phase gates (Phase 0 → DV → PV → production), holding the critical path and technical risk register.
• Make and defend trade‑offs across image quality, runtime, cost, optics/detector supply, and certification timelines.
• Lead design‑review and pre‑DV readiness — ensuring PRD requirements are testable and verification is defined
  * before* the gate.
• Own program‑level root cause when sensor, supply, or integration failures threaten a milestone (8D), and judge when a root cause is real.
• Manage supplier and certification dependencies (optics, detector materials, cells, NFPA / UN38.3 / automotive qual) as part of the plan.
• Give leadership honest status — including the hard calls, with the data behind them.

• 7+ years in engineering, 3+ leading complex hardware or hardware/firmware programs from definition to production.
• Real technical depth in one core domain (imaging/optics, detector or semiconductor processes, embedded, or electro‑mechanical) and fluency across the rest — enough to read a spec, an FA, and a test report and form your own judgment.
• Ownership of the critical path on a product that actually shipped.
• Fluency with phase‑gate development, PRD/requirements management, DV/PV verification, 8D, and RASIC.
• The ability to disagree well — hold a position, elevate cleanly, then commit.

Thermal/IR imaging, FPA/ROIC, NUC/AGC pipelines, or LWIR optics; regulated/certified products (NFPA, automotive qual, battery safety); semiconductor packaging or yield analysis.