Senior Program Manager I - Laser Communications

Location: Long Beach, California, United States; based at hirify.global’s global headquarters. The position is for candidates seeking to work in U.S. offices and requires U.S. Person status or eligibility for applicable ITAR/EAR authorizations.

Base pay range: $125,300–$187,850 USD annually.

Company

hirify.global is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, optical communication terminals, and other critical space subsystems for commercial, civil, and defense missions.

What you will do

• Lead multiple laser communication terminal programs from award through qualification, rate production, delivery, and on-orbit checkout.
• Own customer outcomes, delivery commitments, schedules, milestones, acceptance reviews, risks, and overall program health.
• Coordinate engineering teams on link performance, data rate, SWaP, environmental qualification, and optical terminal interoperability.
• Identify and resolve yield, supplier, test-capacity, and production risks with Operations, Supply Chain, Product, and engineering teams.
• Manage program startup, baselining, qualification reviews, export and ITAR obligations, customer acceptance, and closeout across U.S. and European sites.
• Serve as the primary customer interface, support proposals and product configuration, mentor colleagues, and develop future program leaders.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, or Math.
• Working understanding of free-space optical or RF communications, including link budgets, pointing, acquisition and tracking, modems and coding, and space or airborne environmental qualification.
• 5+ years of experience in space, aerospace, or photonics hardware programs, including multiple full program cycles.
• Track record of leading a complex hardware program through customer delivery, schedule and risk management, and acceptance under pressure.
• Experience moving real hardware from prototype through qualification and rate-production delivery to customers.
• Experience managing program cost, EAC, and customer contract changes with finance and product teams on a meaningful-scale program.
• Evidence of delivering hardware at rate to a demanding customer while maintaining trust through a slip, test failure, or contract change.
• U.S. Person status is required for ITAR/EAR compliance, or eligibility to obtain the required U.S. authorizations.

Nice to have

• Direct experience with optical inter-satellite links or optical ground or airborne terminals.
• Experience taking low-volume, hand-built optical or electro-optical hardware into high-rate production without reducing reliability.
• Experience delivering to large commercial or defense constellation programs.
• Experience serving as the primary customer interface for constellation operators or satellite primes from kickoff through acceptance.
• Experience leading geographically distributed program work with export-control and dual-use compliance.
• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Optics/Photonics, Physics, or a related field.
• Experience with systems engineering, trade studies, interface control, requirement integrity, Jira, Confluence, and ERP/MRP.
• Use of AI tools for schedule and risk analysis, status reporting, and customer communications.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-paced, collaborative environment focused on hard deadlines, technical delivery, teamwork, and continuous innovation.
• Company stock, an Employee Stock Purchase Program with a 15% discount, and competitive total compensation.
• Medical, dental, vision, HMO, PPO, zero-cost HDHP, HSA contribution, flexible spending, and dependent care accounts.
• Paid vacation and sick time, 11 paid holidays, paid parental leave, disability and life insurance, and a 401(k) with company match.
• Additional benefits include EV charging, onsite fitness centers where available, gym discounts, snacks and beverages, and employee discounts.
• The role may involve prolonged sitting, standing, walking, computer work, and occasional exposure to moderate noise, dust, and fumes in production areas.