R&D Equipment & Facilities Program Lead

First Solar Inc.; Santa Clara (CA); Hybrid; USD 171,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

First Solar is seeking a senior Project/Program Manager to lead equipment development, delivery, and deployment within a Research and Development setting. The role integrates mechanical engineering leadership, design maturity, and cross-functional execution to deliver critical projects.

You will manage facilities operations at the R&D site, coordinate with multiple functions, and drive projects from design through handoff.

Qualifications

• BS degree in mechanical engineering, automation, or mechatronics required.
• MS Degree in Engineering Discipline preferred.
• MBA will be considered, but must have technology experience.
• 7+ years of project or program management experience, including at least 5 years leading equipment-development or engineering projects in an R&D, automation, pilot-line, manufacturing, or other high tech environment through design, qualification, deployment, and operational handoff.
• Experience using MS Project or equivalent scheduling, resource-planning, risk-management, and action-tracking tools.
• PMP certification or equivalent demonstrated project management capability preferred.
• Experience with CCPM, TOC, or other resource-constrained scheduling methods and corresponding project portfolio management software is a plus.
• Experience of facilities management or similar role is a plus.
• Demonstrated capability leading cross-functional technical teams and influencing contributors without direct reporting authority is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Independently build and maintain integrated project plans for the equipment portfolio.
• Owns overall project scope, schedule, budget, resources, risks, dependencies, and execution; drives equipment projects to agreed technical, safety, cost, and schedule objectives.
• Manage contracted facility operations teams to achieve performance, cost, and reliability goals 24x7, including on call coverage.
• Aligns stakeholders on project objectives, requirements, priorities, and decision criteria; develops mitigation and recovery plans when commitments are at risk.
• Leads design and project reviews, tracks decisions and action items, communicates status, and drives timely closure of technical and execution issues.
• Maintains accurate project schedules, dashboards, decision logs, risk registers, action trackers, and project documentation using approved tools.
• Independently improves and standardizes practical equipment-project-management processes, templates, metrics, and governance appropriate for CTC.
• Develop and manage equipment-project capital and expense budgets, forecasts, purchase commitments, and cost risks in alignment with approved plans.
• Lead automatic platform and related mechanical engineering projects, ensuring safe, technically sound, on-time, and on-budget execution.
• Establish clear responsibilities, deliverables, interfaces, and performance expectations for project team members and suppliers.
• Build effective working relationships with equipment suppliers, fabricators, integrators, internal customers, and technical stakeholders.
• Coordinate equipment reliability, maintainability, serviceability, spare-parts, and support-readiness requirements with engineering and operations stakeholders.
• Drive continuous improvement using project delivery, equipment performance, reliability, cost, and issue-closure metrics.
• Partner with EHS to ensure compliance, life safety system performance, inspections, and reporting requirements. Maintain a positive working relationship with regulators.
• Ensure adherence to all safety policies, procedures, and housekeeping standards.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Skills

Project management

MS Project

Cross-functional leadership

Risk management

AI tools

Scheduling

Education

Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, automation, or mechatronics

Master's degree in engineering

MBA (considered with tech experience)

PMP certification

Tools

Portfolio-management software

Scheduling tools

PM software

Job description

First Solar is seeking a senior Project/Program Manager to lead equipment development, delivery, and deployment within a Research and Development setting. The role integrates mechanical engineering leadership, design maturity, and cross-functional execution to deliver critical projects.

You will manage facilities operations at the R&D site, coordinate with multiple functions, and drive projects from design through handoff.