Technical Program Manager (Sustaining), Hardware Engineering

📋 Description

• • As a Technical Program Manager (Sustaining) at Nex, you will be instrumental in ensuring the seamless mass production and global market readiness of our award-winning Nex Playground active play system. This pivotal role focuses on the critical post-launch phase, guaranteeing that our innovative product continues to meet the highest standards of quality, reliability, and manufacturability as we scale production worldwide.
• • Your primary responsibility will be to own the sustaining engineering efforts for Nex Playground during its mass production lifecycle. This involves a comprehensive approach to managing product changes, localizing the product for diverse global markets, and meticulously meeting international Go-To-Market (GTM) timelines. You will be the driving force behind bringing new production lines or sites online, efficiently managing change orders, and continuously improving the product's quality, reliability, and overall manufacturability.
• • You will act as a central hub, coordinating and collaborating closely with a wide array of internal and external stakeholders. This includes retail operations, marketing teams, design departments, hardware and software engineering, compliance officers, supply chain management, and our Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs). Your ability to establish scalable processes, orchestrate complex dependencies, drive critical decisions, ensure constant alignment across all parties, and proactively manage risks will be paramount to success.
• • A key aspect of your role will be managing the entire lifecycle of SKUs, including handling product changes, executing localization strategies, ensuring compliance with international regulations, and implementing packaging improvements for both domestic and international GTMs. You will build strong, collaborative relationships with stakeholders and vendors, fostering an environment of trust and efficiency.
• • You will lead cross-functional issue triage, guiding teams towards swift and effective resolutions. This involves working seamlessly with internal teams, ODMs, suppliers, independent test labs, and retail/platform vendors to identify, diagnose, and resolve any production or quality-related challenges.
• • Driving quality, reliability, and manufacturability improvements will be a core focus. You will own the quality management framework, overseeing processes from First Article Inspection (FAI) and Pre-Delivery Inspection (PDI) through to Failure Reporting, Analysis, and Corrective Action System (FRACAS). You will diligently track escape routes and verify the successful implementation of fixes into the production process.
• • Orchestrating complex change management processes will be a significant part of your duties. You will lead sustaining builds and change cut-ins, ensuring clear entry and exit criteria, robust sample plans, and well-defined success metrics are in place for each initiative.
• • You will be responsible for planning factory readiness, conducting audits, and managing production ramps. This includes aligning production capacity, defining golden samples, ensuring adequate test coverage, overseeing line bring-up, and managing vendor capabilities to meet holiday-scale production volumes.
• • To ensure transparency and facilitate informed decision-making, you will instrument and publish key sustaining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), create insightful dashboards, and deliver regular weekly reports on production status and progress.
• • Maintaining accurate and comprehensive documentation is crucial for enabling fast onboarding, efficient audits, and continuous improvement. You will be responsible for updating and managing specifications, test protocols, Engineering Change Orders (ECOs), and runbooks.
• • This role demands a proactive, detail-oriented individual with a strong manufacturing background and excellent judgment. You should be comfortable navigating uncertainties, critically evaluating assumptions, and bringing order through well-defined processes and meticulous documentation. Your ability to think holistically about systems and processes will be key to optimizing our production and sustaining efforts.