Technical Program Manager

About us:
A&K Robotics develops autonomous mobility technology designed to help people move through large, complex spaces with more freedom and independence. Designed and built in Canada, our Cruz™ Mobility Pod is an all-electric, AI-enabled micro-mobility solution created for real-world environments.

We operate in dynamic, human-centered spaces like airports, where autonomy is not just a technical challenge but a social one. In partnership with leading airports and airlines, we deliver more accessible and efficient travel experiences, and are looking for outstanding, ambitious people to join our team.

Context & Role:
We’re seeing rapid market growth and are looking for a Technical Program Manager with a unique blend of technical expertise and program management experience to drive execution across a highly cross-functional system.

This role sits at the intersection of hardware, software, autonomy, and real-world deployment. Your impact will be as a force multiplier across the team, helping unlock time, reduce friction, and improve execution across both hardware and software workstreams, while ensuring alignment with company priorities and goals.

As we move from successful pilots to scalable deployments, the challenge is no longer just building individual components. It is ensuring that everything works together reliably in real environments. This requires coordinating teams that move at different speeds, managing dependencies across systems, and identifying risks before they become blockers.

This is not a traditional program management role. We are looking for someone who can bring structure to a fast-moving, highly interdependent environment without slowing down execution. Someone who can create clarity where there is ambiguity, and drive momentum across complex, evolving initiatives.

By joining our team, you won't just be working on any project. You will be shaping the future of travel, making a tangible difference in how people move through the world. Your work here matters. You will play a direct role in bringing our systems into real-world use, and in creating a seamless, reliable, and human-centered experience for people globally.

What you’ll be doing at A&K:

• Coordinating our multi-disciplinary team across highly interdependent hardware and software workstreams to help us scale. This is a technical role, but the most important skills are interpersonal - to help your teammates do great work and be their best selves
• Collaborating with great people to turn vision into reality. You will understand the needs of our customers better than they do and incorporate that when defining our execution strategies.
• Accelerating new feature development by building and maintaining detailed project plans, coordinating schedules, allocating resources, and maintaining clear ownership. The clear documentation, architecture overviews, and technical roadmaps will facilitate efficient and scalable collaboration across the company, with customers, 3^rd party vendors and partners.
• Anticipating potential project challenges early and proactively devising risk mitigation strategies including proposing practical solutions to support adaptable and smooth project execution in the face of dynamic and uncertain scenarios.
• Regularly preparing and presenting reports on the progress of initiatives to key stakeholders, including executive leadership
• Building and sustaining relationships with essential or strategic partners and suppliers, recognizing both their immediate importance and long-term value to the company's goals

What you’ll bring to the team:

• 5+ years’ experience in deep tech or building technically rigorous, complex systems (strong technical foundation required to understand and coordinate work effectively)
• 2+ years’ experience leading teams to ship products or software to market in a quick and iterative manner as a Program Manager or similar role. Comfortable operating in environments where things are not fully defined, and able to bring clarity without needing perfect information
• Demonstrated project planning experience, including coordinating schedules, allocating staff time, and creating development roadmaps that account for complex task interdependencies
• Ability to work on and prioritize multiple simultaneous initiatives, understanding how they are connected and making tradeoffs when necessary
• Customer-centric mindset, with an ability to stay clear-minded when adapting and being flexible for a quickly-evolving market
• Hands-on experience with basic prototyping, fabrication, manufacturing, or testing/QA
• Exceptional problem-solving skills - ability to work within constraints, budgets and think outside the box 
• Exceptional interpersonal skills – conflict resolution, motivation, mentoring
• You take immense pride in your work and pay attention to the smallest details
• You take ownership and responsibility for your tasks and actions, and lead by example
• Excellent writing skills that demonstrate organization and understanding of the big picture, while enabling you to efficiently and effectively communicate each team member’s work in the context of overall team goals and strategy
• Demonstrated aptitude for using Jira or other similar project management software, with an ability to quickly adapt to and master new tools as needed. 
• Bachelor of Computer Science, Engineering, Science, or other technical discipline

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience with autonomous mobile robots or self-driving vehicles
• Experience with electronics, sensors, firmware, communication protocols, and/or power management
• Experience with mechanical design and CAD
• Experience with DFM principles
• Experience writing code (preferably C++)
• Experience with common software development life cycle methodologies such as Agile and CI/CD, and adhering to best practices, including common design patterns
• Understanding of modern AI/ML systems, including foundational models and their capabilities and limitations
• Familiarity with deploying or integrating ML models into real-world systems
• Exposure to data pipelines, dataset curation, or model evaluation workflows

Most importantly, you share our values: 

• Diversity makes innovation. We debate, listen, respect and include different perspectives 
• Always strive to learn and be better. We push the bar higher and insist on the best
• Create value for people. Think big, be bold and see opportunities where others see challenges
• Make it better than we found it. Consider the long-term impact of our actions today
• Grit. Good things take work. We commit, battle and deliver as a team 

* Applications with a project or experience portfolio will be prioritized, diversity of projects is considered an asset

Compensation and Perks:

• Salary: $100,000 to $180,000, pending scope of experience
• Ground floor stock options in a growing company
• Medical benefits
• Central Vancouver office location and gym access at current location
• Secured bike storage
• Healthy office snacks
• Significant opportunities for career advancement if you can demonstrate that you’re up to the task