Principal Program Manager

RF IDeas Inc
  • Schaumburg, IL
    5 days ago

    Job Description

    Major Areas of Responsibility / Essential Functions

    • Own end-to-end delivery of a portfolio of concurrent, high-complexity programs, aligning scope, schedule, cost, and quality with organizational strategy.
    • Establish and continuously champion program management standards, tools, and governance across the organization.
    • Serve as the primary program-level interface to executive leadership, translating program status, risk, and trade-offs into clear business decisions.
    • Lead cross-functional teams (engineering, product management, quality, operations, supply chain, and marketing) without formal authority, driving accountability and alignment.

    Specific Responsibilities

    • Build and maintain integrated master schedules across hardware, firmware, and software workstreams, modeling scenarios and stress-testing critical paths.
    • Lead proactive risk management: identify, quantify, and mitigate program risk, flagging emerging issues before they impact delivery.
    • Conduct resource capacity planning and demand forecasting across the program portfolio to anticipate bottlenecks.
    • Own program financials: budget, cost tracking, and forecast-to-actual variance reporting.
    • Allocate resources, budget, and hours across the program portfolio, and proactively adjust allocations as priorities, risks, or constraints shift.
    • Drive structured after-action reviews and retrospectives; convert lessons learned into process improvements and playbooks.
    • Translate product and business requirements into detailed, phase-gated implementation plans.
    • Track, evaluate, and communicate the impact of program-level changes, maintaining a clear decision and change log for stakeholders.
    • Prepare status reports, executive summaries, meeting notes, and program documentation, using AI tools to accelerate drafting where helpful, with sound judgment on review and accuracy before distribution.
    • Evaluate and pilot new program and project management tools, capabilities, and workflows; recommend adoption where they create measurable efficiency or quality gains.

    Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

    • Exceptional communication, organization, and executive-level documentation skills; able to distill complex, multi-workstream programs into clear narratives for senior leadership.
    • Demonstrated strategic leadership, sound judgment, and interpersonal influence across all levels of the organization, including without direct authority.
    • Proven ability to operate effectively in a fast-changing, ambiguous environment and to bring structure to complexity.
    • Strong working fluency with AI-enabled productivity tools and a demonstrated track record of applying them to improve program outcomes.
    • Comfort using data and analytics to drive proactive rather than reactive program management.
    • Positively influences managers, peers, cross-functional teams, vendors, and customers; skilled at building consensus among competing priorities.
    • Deep commitment to quality and to internal and external customer outcomes.
    • Advanced proficiency in modern program/project management platforms (e.g., Atlassian, Monday.com, Microsoft Project or equivalent) and collaboration tools.
    • Able to operate with a high degree of autonomy and minimal direct supervision, while keeping stakeholders appropriately informed.
    • Curiosity and adaptability toward emerging tools and ways of working, with a bias toward experimentation balanced by rigorous risk and quality review.

    Education and Experience

    • Bachelors degree required (engineering or related technical field strongly preferred; advanced degree a plus).
    • Typically requires ten or more years of related experience, including significant experience leading complex new-product development programs and managing multiple concurrent, high-complexity programs at a portfolio level
    • Project Management Certification (PMP) or Agile/SAFe certification a plus.

    Physical Demands

    None specified.

    Work Environment

    Hybrid - 3 days onsite in Schaumburg, IL, 2 days WFH.

    Behavioral Assessment

    In addition to supplying your resume, we ask that you complete our Behavioral Assessment through Predictive Index at the following link:

    https://assessment.predictiveindex.com/bo/B3WV/PrincipalProgramManager_Jul2026_154237

    Tips:

    • Complete the assessment in a quiet place, free from interruption, in one session.
    • Take as much time as you wish to complete the assessment - it typically takes less than 7 minutes.
    • Please use one of the following browsers: Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.

    Numbers & Facts

    LocationSchaumburg, IL

    Skills

    • Agile Programming Methodologiesunmatched
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI)unmatched
    • Budget Managementunmatched
    • Budgetingunmatched
    • Business Strategyunmatched
    • Capacity Managementunmatched
    • Computer Firmwareunmatched
    • Consensus Building Skillsunmatched
    • Cost Forecastingunmatched
    • Cross-Functionalunmatched
    • Data Analysisunmatched
    • Demand Forecasting/Planningunmatched
    • Documentationunmatched
    • Establish Prioritiesunmatched
    • Government Organizationsunmatched
    • Interface Programming Languagesunmatched
    • Interpersonal Skillsunmatched
    • Leadershipunmatched
    • Marketingunmatched
    • Meeting Minutesunmatched
    • Microsoft Projectunmatched
    • Physical Demandsunmatched
    • Process Improvementunmatched
    • Product Developmentunmatched
    • Product Managementunmatched
    • Project Management Certificationunmatched
    • Project Management Professional (PMP)unmatched
    • Project Management Softwareunmatched
    • Project/Program Managementunmatched
    • Quality Metricsunmatched
    • Reporting Skillsunmatched
    • Resource Managementunmatched
    • Riskunmatched
    • Risk Analysisunmatched
    • Risk Managementunmatched
    • Status Reportsunmatched
    • Stress Modelingunmatched
    • Stress Testingunmatched
    • Supply Chain Operationsunmatched
    • Team Lead/Managerunmatched
    • Variance Analysisunmatched

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