Technical Program Manager

OVERVIEW Physical Superintelligence is a startup with roots at Google, NVIDIA, Harvard, Meta, MIT, Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, and the Perimeter Institute building AI systems to discover new physics at scale. Our mission is to discover and commercialize transformative physics breakthroughs at scale with artificial superintelligence, safely, verifiably, and for broad public benefit. The last century's golden age of physics gave us transistors, lasers, and nuclear energy. We believe artificial superintelligence will unlock the next one. We're creating the infrastructure to industrialize scientific discovery and usher in this new era. We have one product: new physics, at scale. Data centers are where that product meets the market first. Our platform, Emmy, builds a coupled physics twin of a customer's site and finds capacity and energy the operator did not know they had. Every engagement runs through the same steps: NDA, scoping study, data-requirements document, pilot, contract. The physics moves fast. What stalls is everything around it: a redline waiting on customer legal, a data export waiting on a security review, a site walk waiting on a badge, a facilities engineer waiting for someone who can explain what the twin needs and why. We are seeking a Technical Program Manager to own each data center engagement end to end: the person who can explain what Emmy does, what it cannot yet do, and why, and who makes sure no engagement ever waits on a non-technical dependency. ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES The role has two halves. You do both. Represent PSI technically. You are the technical face of PSI on the engagement. You hold a technical conversation with the customer's facilities and infrastructure engineers and are taken seriously. You hold the same conversation with our engineers and researchers: what Emmy can do today, what is on the roadmap, why we built it the way we did, and how it applies to this site. You know where the data lives on a customer's site, what it takes to get it through their IT security review, and when an export is not usable. You turn the customer's requirements and constraints into the data-requirements document and the instrumentation plan our engineers need, and you explain results back to the customer accurately. You do not build the models or write production code. Run the engagement. Run each engagement from first conversation through signed contract and pilot. Hold the plan and the dependency list for every active customer. Know at any moment what the next blocker is, who owns it on each side, and when it clears. Own the non-technical workstreams: NDAs, engagement agreements and exhibits, data-sharing and security questionnaires, site access, insurance and compliance requests, invoicing milestones. Commercial terms and technical scope are set elsewhere; you make sure they get signed, and you chase whoever is late, on either side. Own the outcome. When a customer strikes the clause that protects our models, you go back to them before you come to us. When a promised date is no longer true, you tell the customer's executive the same day, in writing, with a new date. You escalate with a recommendation, not a question. The customer is your project: if they are not getting what they need, that is yours to fix. Be the customer's operational counterpart. Run the weekly cadence with their project lead and facilities team, publish decisions and action items the same day, and confirm the data arrived and is what was asked for before engineering finds out it is not. Make Attio the system of record. Build the engagement pipeline on top of our CRM: stages, documents, blockers, owner and due date on every open item. Any status question about a customer should be answerable from Attio without asking you. Run the work through AI agents. Draft notes, status updates, redline summaries, and intake checklists with agents, and wire them to Attio so tracking and follow-up happen without you typing them. We measure this role on how many engagements one person can run well. This is an individual contributor role. You manage programs, not people. If the engagements you run succeed, a team may grow underneath you; that is not the starting point. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR • Hands-on experience with software for physical systems, in at least one of: industrial data integration (building management systems, SCADA, historians, BACnet or Modbus); simulation or digital-twin delivery (CFD, FEA, or similar); or analytics software delivered to industrial or facilities customers. You are comfortable with APIs, SQL, some Python, and data pipelines. You do not write production code. • An engineering degree or equivalent hands-on technical background (mechanical, electrical, or computer science), with working fundamentals in power, thermal, or mechanical systems. You can hold a technical conversation with our engineers about how the platform works and with a facilities engineer about the site, without a translator. • Five or more years delivering technical projects to external customers where the deliverable depended on legal, procurement, security, or facilities workstreams you did not control. Consulting, professional services, forward-deployed or solutions engineering, or technical program management on the customer side of the table. • A record of unblocking. You can describe several engagements where the technical work was ready, something else was in the way, and exactly what you did to clear it, without waiting for direction. • Comfort with contracts. You have shepherded NDAs, MSAs, SOWs, or data-sharing agreements through two legal departments at once and can tell which redlines need a lawyer and which need a phone call. • Steadiness with senior people. You will tell founders, customer executives, and their counsel that something is late, and you will hold a position in a room that is pushing back. • Fluency with AI agents in daily work. You already use them to draft, summarize, and automate follow-ups, and you can wire a workflow to a CRM record without waiting for an engineer. • Operates independently in ambiguity. You decide when nobody has told you the answer, and you ship rather than stall. NICE TO HAVE • Working fluency in data center operations: MW of critical load, PUE, CRAH units, BMS and DCIM exports, capacity and commissioning. Operator or developer side of data centers, colocation, or hyperscale infrastructure counts most. • Thermal engineering, CFD, HVAC, or power systems, formal or self-taught. • Performance-based or shared-savings commercial structures, where a measured baseline must be agreed first. • Administering a CRM (Attio, HubSpot, Salesforce): pipelines and automations, not only data entry. • Standing up a delivery, professional services, or deployment engineering function at an early-stage company. HOW WE WORK We hold a high technical bar and give people full ownership of their work, from spec to ship to on-call. We write contracts before logic, test against real systems instead of mocks, and favor simple designs that ship over clever ones that do not. Our development process is AI-native: we work with agentic coding tools daily, write specs that are legible to humans and agents alike, and lead with leverage. We expect the same from program work. LOCATION AND COMPENSATION This role is based in Boston, on-site at our Cambridge hub, with regular travel to customer facilities. We offer competitive compensation including salary, benefits, and meaningful early-stage equity. We evaluate on technical credibility, delivery record, written communication, leverage from agents, and judgment under pressure. Because of our export control obligations, some responsibilities may carry restrictions tied to citizenship or immigration status, which we will discuss transparently during the process. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diverse perspectives in building platforms for AI-driven discovery.