Principal Technical Program Manager

At Hayden AI we are on a mission to harness the power of computer vision to transform the way transit systems and other government agencies address real-world challenges.

From bus lane and bus stop enforcement to transportation optimization technologies and beyond our innovative mobile perception system empowers our clients to accelerate transit enhance street safety and drive toward a sustainable future.

What the job involves

The Principal Technical Program Manager will own cross-functional visibility and delivery accountability across Haydens full engineering and business portfolio. Working directly with executive leadership and business partners across Engineering Growth Finance and Operations this role translates competing business commitments into a coherent executable plan holding the line when capacity and demand diverge. They operate across the full technical stack: hardware embedded software edge AI cloud computer vision fleet systems and government deployment - fluent enough in each domain to surface the right risks and drive the right conversations.

Responsibilities:

• Portfolio Governance: Own the company-level program portfolio maintaining a single source of truth for commitments capacity dependencies and status across all active lines of work.

• Business-Engineering Translation: Serve as the primary interface between executive leadership and engineering teams translating business commitments (contracts growth targets customer deployments) into engineering capacity plans and surfacing tradeoffs before they become misses.

• Executive Reporting: Design and maintain the dashboards cadences and reporting frameworks that give the senior leadership clear accurate visibility into portfolio health without noise.

• Capacity Planning & Demand Management: Partner with engineering leads across Hardware Perception Platform/Cloud and Eng Ops to maintain a real-time view of capacity versus committed demand and drive prioritization decisions when they conflict.

• Cross-Functional Program Delivery: Drive end-to-end delivery of strategic programs that span multiple engineering pillars and business functions including customer-facing deployments new product launches and operational scaling initiatives.

Required Qualifications:

• B.S. M.S. or Ph.D. in an engineering discipline

• 12 years in Technical Program Management Engineering Program Management or a related role

• Demonstrated track record managing a portfolio of concurrent cross-functional programs in a fast-moving environment

• Experience navigating business-engineering tension: translating contracts revenue commitments or customer obligations into engineering capacity and sequencing decisions

• Technical fluency across multiple domains enough to engage credibly with hardware embedded cloud and AI engineering teams without domain specialists present

• Strong executive communication skills: structured direct and able to distill complex program status into clear decisions

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with on-vehicle edge-deployed or ruggedized systems (hardware embedded edge AI)

• Background in computer vision autonomous systems robotics or AI/ML programs

• Experience delivering technology to government or municipal clients (procurement cycles compliance requirements deployment constraints)

• Familiarity with fleet management secure transaction systems or sensor hardware platforms

• Experience in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment where process didnt exist before you built it

Required Experience:

Manager