Strategy & Programs Manager

📋 Description

• • As a Strategy & Program Manager at PhysicsX Limited, you will be instrumental in driving the company's growth and operational excellence within a fast-paced, deep-tech environment. This role is designed for a versatile individual who thrives at the intersection of strategic planning, operational efficiency, and cross-functional execution. You will tackle critical, strategically important initiatives that may not have a clear owner, ensuring they are addressed effectively as the company scales rapidly following its Series B funding.
• • You will be a key player in the Strategy & Programs function, a team dedicated to ensuring PhysicsX scales gracefully with clarity, alignment, and discipline. This team acts as the connective tissue for a rapidly growing organization, bridging the gap between high-level strategy and day-to-day execution.
• • Your responsibilities will span a dynamic range of activities, including leading outcome-driven programs, translating complex strategies into actionable plans, and maintaining strategic direction through robust planning processes. You will proactively identify and solve organizational pain points, foster cross-functional collaboration, and clearly communicate the impact of your work.
• • A core aspect of this role involves leading time-boxed programs in partnership with functional leaders. The goal is to directly amplify team performance and align with company-wide objectives, ensuring all programs are delivered on time, within scope, and to the highest quality standards.
• • You will be responsible for breaking down broad strategic objectives into measurable steps, developing milestone-based plans, actively managing risks and issues, and leading status synchronization meetings to ensure clear and effective execution.
• • Supporting the company’s strategic planning process is crucial. This includes contributing to annual strategy refreshes, quarterly business reviews, and OKR cycles. You will also invest in developing telemetry and automated metrics to provide leadership with a trusted, real-time view of progress and performance.
• • Proactively identifying challenges at both the company and team levels will be a key function. This will be achieved through gathering stakeholder feedback, analyzing operational health metrics, and conducting competitive intelligence. These insights will then be translated into structured, impactful programs.
• • Driving cross-functional alignment is paramount. You will foster collaboration across departments such as Delivery, Product, Research, and Operations to remove obstacles and ensure seamless integration as the company expands.
• • Communicating the impact of your initiatives is vital for building trust and momentum. This involves crafting clear internal briefs, retrospective reports, and program updates that effectively convey progress and successes.
• • A critical part of your role is to 'close the loop' on programs. This means collecting feedback, quantifying the return on investment (ROI), and ensuring that every program leaves behind durable improvements that have a lasting positive effect on the organization.
• • You will engage in diverse program examples, such as leading the annual strategy refresh, aligning executive priorities, and translating strategy into OKRs and quarterly plans. You might also work on regional expansion projects, assessing new markets, building business cases, and designing entry action plans.
• • Another area of focus could be supercharging productivity through AI tooling, automating tasks like document preparation, meeting summaries, and reporting to save teams valuable time and enable scalable growth. You may also be involved in shaping the company's narrative by preparing board and investor reports that combine performance data with a compelling growth story.
• • This role offers a unique opportunity to gain deep, cross-functional exposure across all facets of a scaling AI company, providing an accelerated learning curve and building rare organizational context and judgment. You will be trusted with sensitive and consequential decisions, requiring discretion and a commitment to doing the unglamorous work that enables success.
• • The ideal candidate will bring a high degree of judgment and low ego, demonstrating the humility to perform essential tasks and the discretion to handle critical decisions. A proven ability to translate high-level strategy into executable plans and drive them to completion is essential. Exceptional communication skills, both written and verbal, are required to lead meetings and deliver impactful presentations. You must be adept at stakeholder management, influencing across functions without direct authority, and adapting your communication style to various audiences, from team members to executive leadership.
• • A data-driven mindset is crucial, including the ability to define key metrics, build dashboards, and interpret trends. A strong love of learning and a willingness to dive into unfamiliar domains to build credibility quickly are highly valued. Self-direction and the ability to thrive with freedom, knowing when to involve others, are key attributes. Finally, a bias towards building durable systems that function independently of your constant involvement is essential for long-term success.