Technical Program Manager

Position Title: Technical Program Manager
Location: Remote (Full-time);. Core hours are 10am-4pm ET for collaborative work or meetings. We are open to candidates based anywhere in the world who can overlap with our core working hours. We regret that we cannot sponsor visas for US-based foreign nationals. 

Reports to: Director of Programs and Operations

About Arête Glacier Initiative
Climate change is destabilizing marine ice sheets, creating a risk of catastrophic sea-level rise over the next century. Arête Glacier Initiative is a new nonprofit initiative dedicated to understanding this risk and assessing the efficacy, safety, and feasibility of potential interventions to stabilize ice sheets. We aim to fund, coordinate, and accelerate research to enable informed and legitimate societal decisions regarding these interventions.

Position Summary

We are seeking a Technical Program Manager to help them turn ambitious, often ambiguous goals into clear plans and steady progress. You'll help execute on the team's roadmap, then run a clear, lightweight system to track deliverables, schedules, and dependencies day to day. You'll surface risks and blockers early, keep technical workstreams moving on schedule, and build strong working relationships with our external technical partners. The goal is to help researchers and engineers do their best work with minimal programmatic overhead. The role also owns the administrative backbone behind the team's external commitments: guiding contracts through internal review and execution, making sure invoices are paid on time, and checking in regularly with partners to confirm work is progressing as expected.

You'll work closely with the technical teams, including the Chief Technology Officer and Chief and Deputy Scientists, to translate ongoing technical work into clear, trackable progress, track dependencies and communicate program status to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. You don't need to be a domain expert, but you do need enough technical fluency to follow the conversation, are able to go in depth when needed, ask good clarifying questions, and know what “done” looks like for a given task.

Key Responsibilities

• Help shape and manage the engineering and science team's roadmap, working with scientists and engineers to clarify scope, requirements, then turning that into clear OKRs, owners, and timelines as priorities evolve.
• Own day-to-day tracking of OKRs, schedules, deliverables, and cross-team dependencies. Identify and implement improvements to how the team plans, tracks, and shares work.
• Use AI tools to automate tracking, reporting, and documentation, and build lightweight tools or templates the team can reuse.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with technical partners, coordinating on deliverables, technical inputs, and timelines, and raising issues early.
• Proactively identify risks, blockers, and schedule slippage, and help drive them to resolution.
• Follow up on commitments and action items from technical discussions.
• Prepare clear status reports for internal leadership and funders.
• Guide partner contracts through review, approval, and execution, and track invoices to ensure bills are paid on time.
• Manage calendars, meetings, and logistics across time zones, and prepare materials for team meetings, offsites, and planning sessions.

Minimum Qualifications

• ~2-5 years of professional experience; prior experience as a program/project coordinator, TPM, or similar role is a plus, but we're prioritizing fit and approach over years of experience
• Comfort with technical topics and technical people - you don't need a technical background, but you should be able to follow technical conversations and communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience tracking contracts, invoices, or vendor/partner relationships
• Familiarity with program or project tracking tools and AI assistants.
• Experience supporting a technical or research team in a nonprofit, startup, industry or academic setting
• Strong attention to detail and ability to manage multiple priorities and dependencies simultaneously.
• Demonstrated ability to learn new systems and tools quickly.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills. 

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in engineering, science, or a quantitative field, through education or work experience.
• Experience managing projects with ambiguous or evolving scope, such as research, R&D, or early-stage product work.
• Experience working directly with external technical partners, collaborators, or vendors.
• Familiarity with scientific modeling, data analysis, or research workflows.
• Experience preparing reports or updates for funders or other external stakeholders.

Who You Are

• You are comfortable working independently and figuring things out without a fully built playbook.
• You have good judgement about when to apply structure and when a lighter touch is enough - you don't over-engineer things or take instructions too literally without adapting to context.
• You notice when something is falling behind and chase it down without being asked, whether that's an overdue invoice, a stalled contract, or a slipping milestone.
• You are comfortable engaging with technical or science-adjacent material when needed, without needing to be a subject matter expert.
• You are excited to support work addressing climate change and catastrophic sea-level rise. 

Arête Glacier Initiative is a newly launched nonprofit initiative, and as such, we are in the early stages of building our programs and team. This role requires a high degree of flexibility, adaptability, and a willingness to take on diverse tasks as we develop and grow. 

We encourage anyone who is interested in this role to apply, regardless of whether you feel you meet 100% of the qualifications. The top candidates will bring their own unique perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds from a variety of industries along with many but not necessarily all of the skills listed above. 

Salary and Benefits:

• Salary Range: $105k-$130k, commensurate with experience
• Benefits: Arête offers a competitive benefits package, including:
• • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • 401(k)
  • Generous paid time off and sick leave, including parental leave
  • Flexible working hours