Technical Program Manager

Overview

Ready to play a key role in building the future of living? Join Samara in tackling California’s housing shortage and expanding access to sustainable, thoughtfully designed housing without compromising quality.

Our newest product, Locale, is reshaping infill development in the California communities that need housing most. Building on the foundation of Backyard, our fully turnkey, premium ADU, Locale marks an important next chapter for Samara as we expand our product portfolio and scale our in-house capabilities. Together, Locale and Backyard allow us to leverage factory-built construction to deliver high-quality homes and intentionally designed communities at scale. Backed by top-tier investors, including Airbnb, Thrive Capital, and 8VC, Samara is well positioned to make a meaningful impact on the housing market.

To support this next phase, we are looking for a Technical Program Manager to join our Engineering team and lead the delivery of new products. In this role, you will guide each product from first concept to finished homes on site, owning the schedule, budget, risk, and reporting through every phase gate to bring Samara’s vertically integrated cross-functional teams together around a single plan.

What You’ll Do

• Own the integrated program schedule from feasibility through production release, including gate dates, cross-functional dependencies, long-lead procurement windows, and the critical path, and keep it current as conditions change.
• Lead phase-gate reviews: assemble gate packages, confirm deliverables against acceptance criteria, record decisions, and hold the gate when required deliverables are incomplete.
• Track program budget and cost against plan, and report variances and their drivers to leadership.
• Run the program’s risk register, issue log, decision log, and change records, and drive each item to an owner, a due date, and closure.
• Serve as leadership’s source of truth on program health through dashboards and weekly program reviews, with an early, honest view of schedule, cost, and risk.
• Build out the program’s operating structure, including its document repository, RACI, and meeting cadence, so every team knows what it owns, when it is due, and where the current information lives.
• Bring design, engineering, manufacturing engineering, factory operations, supply chain, quality, and site teams together through design, DFM, and readiness reviews, and make sure decisions and actions are captured and closed.
• Partner with the technical lead to sequence engineering design work, surface tradeoffs that affect schedule or cost, and bring the right decisions to leadership at the right time.
• Work with supply chain on material readiness, vendor submittals, and long-lead items, and reflect their status in the schedule and risk plan.
• Lead construction administration for the first article build and site deployment, including manufacturing drawing review and release, RFI and redline tracking, and resolution of factory and field issues.
• Continuously improve our product development process by running post-mortems and first article reviews and making sure findings become approved changes, updated documentation, and lasting lessons.
• Help shape Samara’s program management standards, tools, and reporting as the function grows.

What We’re Looking For

• 3 to 8 years of program management experience on complex physical products, ideally in prefabricated or modular construction, architecture, automotive, manufacturing, or a comparable environment.
• BS/MS in mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, architecture, construction management, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience.
• Demonstrated ownership of schedule, budget, and risk through a phase-gate development process, from early design through production or construction.
• Experience carrying builds from first prototype or first article through production, including clear-to-build reviews, change control, and issue tracking to closure.
• Enough technical fluency across structural, MEP, and envelope systems to read drawings, follow engineering tradeoffs, and ask the questions that matter, without needing to own the technical solution.
• Experience with scheduling and program tools such as Microsoft Project or Asana, and with document control in Autodesk Construction Cloud or comparable platforms.
• Clear, direct communication with leadership, technical teams, factory staff, and external partners, and the confidence to raise risks early.
• A data-driven approach to reporting and a habit of improving the process as you go.
• As comfortable on the factory floor and on a job site as you are presenting to leadership.
• The ambition to help build Samara’s program management function and grow into a leadership role within it.