Physical AI Technical Program Manager (TPM)

Physical AI Technical Program Manager Employer:

• Inabia Solutions & Consulting, Inc.

Location:

• Boston, Massachusetts Work Arrangement: Onsite, five days per week Employment Type: Contract, W-2 Compensation: Competitive compensation Work Authorization: U.S.
• Citizen or Green Card only About the Role Inabia Solutions & Consulting is seeking an experienced Physical AI Technical Program Manager to support the development of a new Physical AI team in Boston.
• Building a Physical AI program from the ground up involves interconnected engineering workstreams, lab-readiness activities, hardware build cycles, validation campaigns, and technical dependencies.
• This role will provide the structure, technical insight, and program leadership required to keep those efforts aligned and moving forward.
• This is not a traditional project coordination position.
• The Technical Program Manager must be comfortable participating in hardware design reviews, understanding complex engineering discussions, asking informed questions, and translating technical status into clear program decisions, risks, and priorities.
• The right candidate will know how to create structure in an ambiguous environment, manage multiple technical workstreams, and hold teams accountable without adding unnecessary administrative overhead.
• What You’ll Be Doing Program Planning and Execution Own the integrated program plan for the Boston Physical AI team, including hardware builds, lab operations, validation campaigns, and engineering milestones.
• Build and maintain a current dependency map across onsite and remote engineering teams.
• Identify technical and schedule risks before they affect major milestones.
• Establish and manage program cadences, including sprint planning, milestone reviews, risk reviews, and cross-team meetings.
• Track action items, technical decisions, owners, deadlines, and commitments across workstreams.
• Hold teams accountable for deliverables and follow-through.
• Adjust program plans as technical requirements, schedules, and priorities change.
• Risk and Decision Management Identify technical, schedule, resource, and dependency risks.
• Develop and drive practical mitigation plans instead of only reporting problems.
• Determine which decisions require leadership involvement and which should be resolved within the engineering teams.
• Establish clear escalation paths for unresolved risks and blockers.
• Build and maintain program dashboards that provide leadership with current visibility into milestones, risks, decisions, and dependencies.
• Reduce manual status collection by creating reliable reporting processes and tools.
• Facilitate structured tradeoff discussions when technical requirements, resources, or priorities conflict.
• Document decisions, owners, and expected outcomes.
• Cross-Team Alignment Serve as the primary connection between onsite lab teams, engineering teams, remote contributors, and organizational stakeholders.
• Translate detailed engineering status into clear program-level updates.
• Communicate program progress, risks, blockers, and decisions to engineering leadership.
• Coordinate with supply chain, facilities, IT, partner engineering teams, and other external stakeholders.
• Resolve dependencies that fall outside the immediate Physical AI team.
• Manage new requests, scope changes, and shifting priorities while maintaining clarity about what is included in the approved program plan.
• Process and Tooling Build practical program management processes designed for a fast-moving research and development environment.
• Establish enough structure to support accountability and execution without creating unnecessary administrative burden.
• Select and manage program-tracking tools such as Jira, Confluence, Asana, or comparable platforms.
• Drive consistent adoption of program tools and reporting standards.
• Create RACI frameworks for major workstreams to clarify ownership, decision authority, and accountability.
• Develop templates for status reporting, risk tracking, decision documentation, and milestone management.
• Required Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• Seven or more years of technical program management experience.
• At least three years of experience managing programs involving hardware development, robotics, physical systems, or related technologies.
• Strong technical foundation with the ability to understand hardware build processes, engineering dependencies, and testing and validation workflows.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex programs with multiple concurrent technical workstreams.
• Experience operating in ambiguous, greenfield, or rapidly changing environments.
• Proven ability to build program-management processes, tools, reporting structures, and operating cadences from the ground up.
• Strong risk identification, mitigation planning, and escalation-management skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to produce clear status reports, risk registers, dependency maps, and decision documents.
• Experience working closely with engineering, lab, operations, and leadership teams.
• Ability to work onsite in Boston five days per week.
• Preferred Qualifications Experience in Physical AI, robotics, autonomous systems, or advanced hardware research and development.
• Knowledge of hardware development lifecycles, including new product introduction, prototype builds, EVT, DVT, and PVT.
• Understanding of the dependencies, risks, and common failure points associated with hardware development.
• Experience adapting agile methodologies to hardware-development programs.
• Previous experience with a hyperscaler, advanced AI lab, robotics company, or high-growth technology organization.
• Experience coordinating supply chain, facilities, IT, and external engineering partners.
• Familiarity with hardware and software integration programs.
• A Day in the Life You may begin the day by reviewing the program dashboard and identifying open issues from a recent hardware build.
• A delayed component delivery has created an upstream dependency, so you update the risk register, assess the integration impact, and provide the engineering lead with possible mitigation options.
• Later that morning, you lead a cross-team program review with the lab manager and technical lead.
• During the meeting, you facilitate a focused discussion between hardware and software teams concerning an unresolved interface specification.
• You drive the group toward a decision, document the outcome, and assign follow-up actions.
• In the afternoon, you update the integrated program plan to account for a recent scope change, review milestone dependencies, and prepare the agenda for the next leadership review.
• Before ending the day, you respond to questions from a partner team in another time zone to prevent unresolved issues from becoming future blockers.
• About Inabia Solutions & Consulting Inabia Solutions & Consulting provides technology consulting, engineering, staffing, and workforce solutions to organizations managing complex business and technical initiatives.
• We connect clients with experienced professionals who can contribute quickly and deliver measurable results.
• Inabia Solutions & Consulting is an equal opportunity employer.
• Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other status protected by applicable law.
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