Senior Project Manager

Terra AI; Redwood City (CA); Hybrid; USD 185,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Terra AI in Redwood City seeks a seasoned project manager to lead cross-disciplinary engagements across geoscience, software, and AI/ML teams. You will guide scoping, data review, model tuning, and delivery of multi-month projects while maintaining strong customer relationships and clear communication across time zones.

You will translate complex technical work for diverse audiences, drive schedules, and help teams adopt structured processes when needed, while remaining adaptable in a fast-paced

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in project management, technical program management, implementation, professional services, or a similar role.
• Experience in a rapidly scaling startup environment is a strong plus.
• Experience working directly with enterprise customers, delivering software products or services.
• Demonstrated ability to work closely with scientists and engineers, understanding underlying technology to ask good questions.
• Experience with software, AI/ML, earth science, physics, or statistical analysis is a plus.
• Strong judgment around when to introduce structure and process, and when flexibility is the better answer.
• A solutions-oriented mindset and a track record of navigating ambiguity, changing priorities, and complex projects.
• Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Multilingual communication skills (strong English required, Spanish is a strong plus).

Responsibilities

• Serve as a primary point of contact across multiple overlapping client projects, owning day-to-day project management and helping ensure successful delivery
• Set and manage clear expectations with customers and internal teams throughout each engagement
• Build and maintain project plans covering scope, timelines, milestones, risks, decisions, and completion status
• Keep important information, decisions, and action items from falling through the cracks, and make sure commitments are met
• Track project health and prioritize using both metrics and your expert judgment
• Help improve the playbooks, tools, and templates that allow us to run more client engagements in parallel without sacrificing quality
• Identify and manage risks and issues: bring the right people together to resolve them, and elevate thoughtfully when needed
• Plan and facilitate effective internal and customer meetings, with clear agendas, decisions, and next steps
• Create clear, polished customer-facing materials and help technical team members communicate their work effectively

Skills

Project management

Stakeholder management

Customer engagement

Communication

Cross-functional collaboration

English proficiency

Spanish language ability

Job description

Terra AI is building a new category at the intersection of artificial intelligence, geoscience, and critical resource development.

As global demand for copper, lithium, nickel, rare earth elements, geothermal energy, and other strategic resources accelerates, the mining and subsurface industries face a growing challenge: traditional exploration methods remain slow, expensive, and highly uncertain. Terra AI was founded to help solve this problem by redefining how critical resources are discovered, evaluated, and developed.

By combining advanced machine learning, probabilistic modeling, and deep geoscience expertise, Terra AI helps exploration and mining companies make faster, more informed subsurface decisions with greater confidence and capital efficiency. The company’s platform integrates geological, geophysical, and drilling data into intelligent systems designed to improve targeting accuracy, accelerate discovery timelines, and reduce exploration risk.

Backed by Khosla Ventures, BHP, and Rio Tinto, Terra AI works with industry leaders to bring a more informed, data-driven approach to critical resource development.

Terra AI’s mission is to define the new global standard for data-driven critical resource development — breaking the cost and time curve required to support electrification, energy security, and the global energy transition.

The company operates with a strong partnership mentality, combining technical rigor, candid communication, continual learning, and environmental stewardship to help modern exploration teams solve some of the world’s most important resource challenges.

Who you are

You’re a seasoned project manager who’s comfortable learning as you go. Experience has taught you what good looks like, where projects tend to break down, and when a little structure can prevent a lot of pain later.

Technical complexity doesn’t intimidate you. You’ve worked closely with scientists and engineers and can absorb complicated information deeply enough to ask good questions, connect the dots, and help teams make sound decisions. You know when a project needs flexibility and room to move—and when it’s time to bring in more structure, process, or discipline.

You are calm under pressure, and in front of high-value customers. You communicate clearly, exercise good judgment, own mistakes when they happen, and help create an environment where others can do the same.

Strong written and visual communication is part of the craft. You can write a paragraph at least as good as this one without the help of an LLM, and you have the editorial judgment to know when a document or slide deck is genuinely ready to present—or when it still needs another pass.

What you’ll do

This role sits at the center of our customer engagements, bringing together teams of geoscientists, software engineers, and AI/ML engineers to solve complex problems in projects that run for a few months at a time. The work is highly collaborative and varied—from early assessment and scoping through data review and processing, development of code and configurations, machine learning, and ultimately validating and tuning the results.

You will establish yourself as a trusted presence with our customers. Our projects involve high-value relationships around the world, with conversations happening both in person and remotely across time zones. Clear communication matters here, whether that means translating complex technical work for a broader audience, helping a teammate sharpen a presentation, or making sure everyone leaves a conversation with the same understanding of what comes next.

Keeping our projects moving takes equal parts organization, judgment, and curiosity. There are schedules and checklists to manage, decisions to make, changes to navigate, and moments when leadership needs to weigh in. But some of the most important contributions are less procedural: asking the question that helps a team see a problem differently, creating space for a better idea to emerge, helping people through an obstacle, and making sure great work gets recognized when the team succeeds.

We’ve built tools and processes to support this work, but we don’t consider any of them finished. There’s plenty of room to improve what exists, challenge how we do things today, and help build what comes next.

Core responsibilities

• Serve as a primary point of contact across multiple overlapping client projects, owning day-to-day project management and helping ensure successful delivery

• Set and manage clear expectations with customers and internal teams throughout each engagement

• Build and maintain project plans covering scope, timelines, milestones, risks, decisions, and completion status

• Keep important information, decisions, and action items, from falling through the cracks, and make sure commitments are met

• Track project health and prioritize using both metrics and your expert judgment

• Help improve the playbooks, tools, and templates that allow us to run more client engagements in parallel without sacrificing quality

• Identify and manage risks and issues: bring the right people together to resolve them, and elevate thoughtfully when needed

• Plan and facilitate effective internal and customer meetings, with clear agendas, decisions, and next steps

• Create clear, polished customer-facing materials and help technical team members communicate their work effectively

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in project management, technical program management, implementation, professional services, or a similar role

• Experience in a rapidly scaling startup environment is a strong plus

• Experience working directly with enterprise customers, ideally delivering software products or services to demanding clients

• Demonstrated ability to work closely with scientists and engineers, understanding enough underlying technology to ask good questions and drive great decisions

• Experience with software, AI/ML, earth science, physics, or statistical analysis is a plus, but we don’t expect expertise across all of them

• Strong judgment around when to introduce structure and process, and when flexibility is the better answer

• A solutions-oriented mindset and a track record of navigating ambiguity, changing priorities, and complex projects

• Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across both technical and non-technical audiences

• Multilingual communication skills (strong English required, Spanish is a strong plus)

• Hybrid work environment at our Redwood City headquarters is preferred; we will consider a remote first role for well qualified candidates residing in the United States, Canada, or Mexico.

• All candidates must be legally authorized to live and work, without visa sponsorship, in The United States, Canada, or Mexico.

Compensation & Benefits

The base salary range for this position $185,000-225,000 annually. Actual compensation will depend on experience, qualifications, skills, and other job-related factors. This position is also eligible for equity and Terra AI’s comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, FSA, and a 401(k) with company match.

Terra AI is an equal opportunity employer. We make employment decisions based on qualifications, merit, and business needs, without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex, gender, pregnancy or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, reproductive health decision-making, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

We’re committed to building a workplace where people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can do their best work. Terra AI also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants and employees with disabilities. If you need an accommodation during the application or interview process, please let us know.