Project Manager

This role exists so that what RiseTech commits to, with its partners and with itself, lands on the date it was committed to. It owns the timeline of everything still to be developed: the joint development programs run with foundries, OSATs and materials partners, and the internal process development that feeds them. It also owns the single plan that microfabrication and electrochemistry work to, because the two disciplines advance together or not at all. This is technical project management, not coordination. We are looking for someone engineers argue with, and then follow. Download Job Description (PDF)

• Own the development timeline, external and internal. Scope, milestones, deliverables and critical path for every joint development program with partners, and for every internal process development program. One baseline, one set of dates, visible to everyone.
• Bridge microfabrication and electrochemistry. Own the joint process development plan across the two disciplines: sequence the work, set the dependencies, and keep both sides working to the same confirmed assumptions. This is where most of the schedule is won or lost.
• Run the weekly and monthly planning rhythm. Weekly planning across process, metrology, microfabrication and sample flow; monthly re-baselining; a capacity view that is honest about what the lab and the tools can actually absorb in a given week.
• Monthly program review with the CEO and the leadership team: status against baseline, what slipped and why, and the decision needed, brought as an option rather than as a problem. Weekly status, change control and escalation towards the partner’s program office, on their cadence and in their format.
• Own the program budget. Build and defend the budget of each program (external services, materials, tooling and laboratory time), track spend against plan, and flag an overrun while it can still be corrected, not at closing.
• Build and lead the project management function. No direct reports in year one. From year two, recruit and lead the JDP Program Manager and the project engineers the portfolio requires, and set how the function works. Day to day you lead without a hierarchical line, across teams that do not report to you.
• Manage risk before it becomes a slip. Keep the risk register alive, force the mitigation decision early, and protect the milestone rather than explain it afterwards.
• Close the loop on results. A program is finished when the process is qualified and the data is there, not when the Gantt is green. Enough traceability that a partner can follow a decision, without building a quality bureaucracy this company does not need yet.
• Degree in Engineering, Physics or Chemistry.
• 10+ years running technical development programs, where the thing had to be developed before it could be delivered. Pure delivery, IT or construction project management is not what this role needs.
• Experience in semiconductor or advanced manufacturing equipment is strongly preferred: front-end, advanced packaging, capital equipment, or an equally hard process and equipment development environment.
• Chemistry or electrochemistry exposure is a strong plus: plating, wet processing, surface treatment, coatings or batteries.
• Customer-facing development programs, not internal projects only.
• Credibility with engineers: you can read a DoE, challenge an estimate, and tell a technical risk from an excuse.
• Critical path, capacity planning, risk registers, change control and re-baselining.
• PMI-PMP certification (Project Management Professional), or an equivalent credential: PRINCE2 Practitioner, IPMA Level B or C.
• Project management tooling: MS Project or equivalent, used for critical path, resource leveling and baselines.
• Agile and Scrum: sprints on the internal process development side, stage gates kept for the partner-facing milestones.
• Fluent English, written and spoken. Italian is a plus.
• You would rather be uncomfortable in a meeting than wrong in a status report.
• You raise the problem with a date early, in front of both the engineers and the partner, instead of hoping it recovers.
• Leadership without authority. The people you coordinate do not report to you. They follow you because your judgment holds up, not because of your title.
• Negotiation and time management. Scope and dates, with partners and internally, across several programs at once, without becoming the bottleneck yourself.
• Curiosity about the technology. You want to understand the process, not only schedule it. In a company this technical, a project manager who stays outside the content loses the room.
• Directness, and the willingness to be corrected. We are a small team working in short cycles, where mistakes are visible and fixed in flight. We value people who say what they think early and change their mind when the data says so.
• Open mindset. You are not afraid to challenge assumptions, and you want to contribute to advancing the state of the art.

Few project management roles let you build the operating rhythm of a company from scratch and own the date on a technology that is still being developed while it is being sold.