Technical Program Manager, Near Space Labs
Engineering Operations, Aerospace / Robotics
5 days a week in office
Aerial imagery and earth observation
Be an early applicant
Aerial imagery and earth observation
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
5 days a week in office
21-100 employees
Company mission
To democratize high-quality geospatial intelligence.
Role
Who you are
- Experience in project management in engineering environments with real-life tradeoffs
- 10+ years of experience, of which 2+ in a similar role
- Hands-on experience with design, manufacturing or test processes in Robotics, Aeronautics, Drones, Auto, IoT, or a similar field containing hardware and embedded software
- Degree in engineering; aerospace, industrial, mechanical, production, electronics or similar
- Mission-oriented and focused on accomplishing goals autonomously
- Willingness to cover different hats and roles as the company expands
What the job involves
- At Near Space Labs we design, build and operate a fleet of stratospheric robots to image the Earth. We launch our proprietary, balloon-based imaging robots to heights between 40,000 and 60,000 feet. From this vantage point, we capture petabytes of imagery for a variety of use cases
- We are seeking a Technical Program Manager to coordinate the lifecycle of new features and upgrades across R&D, Manufacturing, and Fleet Management
- Reporting directly to the CTO, you will be responsible for aligning cross-functional requirements, managing critical-path schedules, and ensuring that our technical standards are met from prototype to deployment
- We are looking for a systems-thinker who can manage the complexity of deploying new hardware to real-life applications, while fostering a culture of disciplined execution
- Create and co-own the project plans and schedule for new features, from inception to deployment in the field
- Coordinate and trade-off the inputs and needs of the different departments involved in a feature release
- Coordinate project gates such as acceptance reviews and others
- Communicate with Flight Operations on the status of feature requests and releases
- Evolve or streamline the existing processes for hardware development and manufacturing in an aerospace environment, with the ideal balance of agility and rigour
- Enhance the tooling that supports development processes, configuration management and traceability if needed
- Lead cross-functional projects with other teams like data engineering, flight operations and product
Our take
Near Space Labs provides customers with high-res imagery of the earth. The twist is, this isn’t satellite imagery, but imagery collected by a zero-emission fleet of wind-powered weather balloons, each one able to capture up to 1,000 square kilometres of imagery on each flight. This makes for an eco-friendly, low-cost alternative to satellite imagery and results in images up to 50 times clearer than those collected by satellite.
The company just raised $20M to expand its helium balloon-powered Swift aircraft. This funding will help it grow its coverage across the US and support industries like insurance and agriculture with clearer, cheaper aerial imagery.
This puts Near Space in an exciting position to offer wide-scale, high-res coverage while staying eco-friendly. Its zero-emission tech and simple design make it a smart, sustainable alternative to drones and satellites, showing how clean innovation can scale and make a real-world impact.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Apr 2025
$20m
SERIES B
Sep 2021
$13m
SERIES A
Total funding: $33m
Company HQ
Brooklyn Navy Yard, NY
Leadership
Rema Matevosyan
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously a Software Developer with InnoRise, then at the Institute for System Programming of Russian Academy of Sciences. Subsequently held a junior research fellowship at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
Ignasi Lluch
(Co-Founder & CTO)Worked on the Galileo Evolutions Team at the European Space Agency, and then as a Space Systems Engineering Researcher at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
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