Program Director

Cambridge, England, United Kingdom

11/26/2024

Cambridge, UK

Full-time, Permanent

Salary: £100,000 - £130,000 dependent on experience

About LowRISC

lowRISC (lowrisc.org) is a community interest company using collaborative engineering to develop and maintain open source silicon designs and tools, through a unique combination of skills, expertise and vision. We work with partners to deliver verified, high quality IP and tools, which provide the solid foundations that are necessary for the rapid development cycles required for next generation silicon products.

lowRISC employs engineering teams in Cambridge (UK) and Zurich (Switzerland). The company maintains several major open source silicon projects, including OpenTitan, and works on contracts and research grants that are aligned with our mission.

The Role

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced Program Director to join our senior leadership team. In this newly created role you will lead the delivery of ground breaking open source silicon projects, which have been developed in collaboration with Google and other Industry partners. You will be supported by two dedicated Project Managers but will also have considerable influence across the organisation as we evolve to meet future developments.

This role requires a high level of coordination between internal and external project teams in a complex open source environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Building and maintaining effective relationships with our international customers at both a strategic and operational level
• Leading, motivating and coaching the project management team (2-4 people) providing them with direction, support and professional development opportunities
• Where there are conflicting requirements you will need to be able to identify and suggest appropriate resolutions whilst maintaining the cohesion of the project team and wider organisation
• Providing oversight as new contracts are agreed and research grant proposals are developed
• Coordinating the successful delivery of projects and contracts to agreed requirements, timescale and budgets
• Managing forecasts for future budget and resource requirements
• Identifying and communicating any risks identified across all projects. Where required, support the project management team to manage scope change and redefine each project as appropriate
• Defining and documenting best practice to assist in the continuous improvement of project management and development processes
• Tracking and evaluating project performance
  
  

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent practical experience
• At least 10 years proven experience planning and managing silicon and/or software development projects
• At least 2 years experience managing a team of project managers in a relevant field
• Ability to interact effectively with all levels of the organisation, including at Board level
• Strong relationship management skills and the ability to communicate with sophistication and care
• First class communication skills including running effective meetings
• Excellent written skills with the ability to articulate processes
• Deep understanding of planning, scheduling, risk management and resource allocation
• A history of successful delivery in the face of challenging circumstances
• Solid organisational skills including attention to detail and multi-tasking skills
• Strong working knowledge of project management and office software tools
• Ability to work with different time zones and hold meetings with our US partners during the evening
• Comfortable with travelling to the US and continental Europe when required. Likely to be no more than 20% of your time
  
  

Desirable experience:

• Demonstrable understanding or hands-on experience in real product development encompassing silicon (or FPGA) designs and embedded software
• Experience working on security critical projects, especially with regards to silicon development, FIPS, and/or Common Criteria
• Contributions to and/or management of open source projects
• Experience liaising with remote development teams
• PMP / PRINCE II certification
  
  

Salary and Benefits

lowRISC offers a generous benefits package including:

Salary and Benefits £100,000 - £130,000

• Central Cambridge Office with hybrid working by agreement
• 12.5% employer’s pension contribution (subject to employee’s contribution of 6%)
• Group Income Protection Insurance
• Critical Illness Insurance
• Life Insurance
• 25 days holiday plus public holidays
• 4 week paid sabbatical after 4 years service
  
  

We are an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from eligible and suitably qualified candidates regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender reassignment, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status, or pregnancy and maternity/paternity

If you need any adjustments made to the application or selection process, please let us know by emailing hr@lowrisc.org

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