Program Manager, Marauder

Saronic; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Saronic Technologies is seeking a Program Manager to own the Marauder, our 180-foot autonomous surface vessel, from contract award through delivery and sustainment. This flagship production program requires leadership across production, engineering, and quality teams, and close engagement with government stakeholders.

The successful candidate will balance throughput with mission flexibility, manage CDRLs and contractual obligations, and drive risk management, integrated planning, and customer

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Naval Architecture, or related technical field.
• 10+ years in program management of large-scale production, shipbuilding, or complex defense development programs.
• Experience with unmanned surface vessels is highly desirable.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to interface confidently with technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end execution of the Marauder program, holding accountability for cost, schedule, scope, and quality from award through delivery and sustainment.
• Serve as a leader and owner of the customer contract, deliverables, milestones, CDRLs, and contractual obligations.
• Build and maintain the integrated program plan, aligning productions scheduled, engineering milestones, and integration timelines to customer commitments.
• Drive risk and opportunity management across the program, escalating and resolving issues that threaten cost, schedule, or performance.
• Report program health, forecasts, and decisions to Saronic leadership and customer stakeholders.

Job description

Saronic Technologies is a leader in revolutionizing autonomy at sea, dedicated to developing state-of-the-art solutions that enhance maritime operations through autonomous and intelligent platforms.

Job Overview

Saronic Technologies is seeking a Program Manager to own the execution and delivery of Marauder, our 180-foot Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) produced at our Franklin, LA shipyard. This is a flagship large-scale production program, and the Program Manager is accountable for its cost, schedule, scope, and customer outcomes from contract award through delivery and sustainment.

Marauder is built at production scale and fielded across a wide and evolving range of complex missions. The Program Manager must pair deep expertise in large-scale shipbuilding and rate production with an instinct for modular kits, payloads, and mission-package integration-understanding how a common hull is configured, re-configured, and sustained to meet diverse customer needs. This role owns the balance between production throughput and mission flexibility.

The Program Manager serves as the primary customer-facing owner of the program, partnering closely with the internal Saronic growth, engineering, production and quality teams. The right candidate brings the customer fluency to manage government stakeholders and contracts, the technical acumen to make technical decisions aligned to the customer needs and contract requirements, and the programmatic discipline to deliver a large, complex platform at scale.

Responsibilities

Program Ownership & Delivery

• Own end-to-end execution of the Marauder program, holding accountability for cost, schedule, scope, and quality from award through delivery and sustainment.
• Serve as a leader and owner of the customer contract, deliverables, milestones, CDRLs, and contractual obligations.
• Build and maintain the integrated program plan, aligning productions scheduled, engineering milestones, and integration timelines to customer commitments.
• Drive risk and opportunity management across the program, escalating and resolving issues that threaten cost, schedule, or performance.
• Report program health, forecasts, and decisions to Saronic leadership and customer stakeholders.

Large-Scale Production Interface

• Partner with the Franklin production team to plan and execute rate production of a 180-foot ASV, from long-lead procurement through hull construction, outfitting, and delivery.
• Monitor build sequencing, work breakdown, and production milestones to protect throughput while meeting quality and acceptance criteria.
• Monitor and mitigate production risks-supply chain, labor, tooling, and facility constraints-unique to large-vessel shipbuilding.
• Coordinate with Quality and Production to ensure build configurations and acceptance events meet customer and contractual standards.

Kit & Mission Package Integration

• Own the configuration strategy for Marauder across a variety of mission packages, kits, and payloads on a common production hull.
• Partner with Mission Package Integration Managers to plan integration of bespoke and commercial-off-the-shelf kits into the production and delivery flow.
• Balance production standardization against mission-driven variance, protecting throughput while enabling flexibility.
• Ensure integration timelines, dependencies, and configuration baselines are reflected in the master program plan.
• Capture mission-package lessons learned and feed them back into production and product roadmaps.

Customer & Stakeholder Engagement

• Serve as the primary point of contact for the customer, managing expectations, requirements, and relationships across the program lifecycle.
• Elicit and clarify evolving mission needs, translating them into actionable program and technical direction.
• Lead program reviews, delivery events, and technical exchanges with government stakeholders, operators, and evaluators.
• Deliver clear, concise program updates and after-action reporting to leadership and customer audiences.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Direct and synchronize a cross-functional program team spanning Production, Engineering, Software, Mission Services, and Forward Deployed Engineering.
• Partner with Technical Program Managers to align technical execution with programmatic commitments.
• Make and defend tradeoff decisions across capability, schedule, cost, and risk.
• Drive disciplined configuration management across vessels, kits, payloads, and software versions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Naval Architecture, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of experience in program management of large-scale production, shipbuilding, or complex defense development programs. Program Management experience of Unmanned Surface Vessels highly desirable.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to interface confidently with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ownership of cost, schedule, and scope on programs of significant size and compl