Principal Program Manager

Who are we?

Oxa is enabling the transition to self-driving vehicles through an initial focus on the most commercially advanced sector; the autonomous shuttling of goods and people.We are home to some of the world’s leading experts on autonomous vehicles, creating solutions such as Oxa Driver, equipping vehicles with full self-driving functionality; Oxa MetaDriver, using Generative AI to accelerate and assure the safety of deployments; and Oxa Hub, a set of cloud-based offerings for autonomous fleet management. Our technology is being deployed across the UK and the U.S, and we’re partnering with a fast-growing ecosystem of operators, vehicle OEMs and equipment makers serving autonomous transportation globally as it advances.

Based in Oxford, and with offices in Canada and the U.S, Oxa was founded in 2014 and is growing rapidly (350+ ‘Oxbots’ to date). Our purpose is to change the way the Earth moves, through an uncompromising focus on safety, efficiency and explainability of our AI approaches. The company has attracted $225 million from leading investors so far, with $140 million raised in the last Series C funding round in January 2023.

Your Role:

Our Principal Program Manager will be responsible for program management across Product Engineering.

They will set the standard for program management, ensuring that processes are fit for purpose, that roadmaps are up-to-date, that resources (human and physical) are well-managed, dependencies, risks and issues are actively managed, and they will ensure we are able to re-plan efficiently when dates and circumstances inevitably change. They will ensure that program management materials are easily consumable by anyone at Oxa, tracking budgets and drive accountability in teams to help us to meet estimates.

This is a hands-on role. As well as providing direction and coaching for leaders across the organisation, they will be expected to personally prepare plans, roadmaps and other program management materials as needed. They will actively seek out program gaps through quantitative methods and intuition, taking ownership and responsibility for these gaps and be able to iterate quickly when/if gaps are discovered with appropriate teams to come up with a joint solution. They will be proactive and often won’t need prompting to find a solution.

What you need to succeed:

• Experience of program management in a large-scale, complex domain. 
• Experience of program managing complex software delivery work is essential, and the ideal candidate will have experience of program managing where there are physical aspects (hardware integration, physically moving hardware and people to locations as needed, and procurement).
• Setting the standard and defining processes and templates for program management in an organisation, ensuring that materials are produced and updated, and are always consumable by anyone in the organisation.
• Experience of actively managing a plan, working with leaders to re-plan and resolve resource conflicts as necessary. Don’t just “report the weather”. 
• Experience of bridging across program management in an organisation and the interface to program management in the third parties they work with.
• Experience of managing plans that need to change, where we are working on a range of initiatives from high uncertainty R&D through to commercial delivery. 
• Ability and willingness to balance between appropriate rigour and pragmatism.
• Ability to build program process where it’s needed in order to help us deliver for customers.

Extra Kudos if you have:

• Experience of mobility e.g. autonomy, or at least products with a hardware element.

Your Personality:

• Loves bringing organisation to an organisation!
• Able to balance rigour and pragmatism according to the situation. 
• Comfortable with a complex domain and a high pace of change.
• Backbone to drive the highest standards through the organisation. 
• An active manager who thinks like an owner, not the type who just “reports the weather”.
• Approachable, confident and comfortable communicating with anyone!
• Is detail oriented - in autonomy the devil is in the detail and the detail is devilish.

We provide:

• Competitive salary, benchmarked against the market and reviewed annually
• Hybrid and/or flexible work arrangements
• An outstanding £3,000 flexible benefits including private medical insurance, critical illness coverage, life assurance, EAP, group income protection
• A salary exchange pension plan
• 25 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays
• A pet-friendly office environment
• Safe assigned spaces for team members with individual and diverse needs

Our Culture:

We promote an open and inclusive culture that empowers our Oxbots to bring their whole, authentic selves to work every day. Oxa is proud to be an inclusive organisation and, as such, we require all team members within our recruitment process to understand and deploy best practices focused on de-biasing the whole recruitment cycle.We also apply a neuro inclusive lens to our recruitment process and want each potential Oxbot to enjoy the best experience possible for them. Please share with us any individual needs or reasonable adjustments we may need to make in advance of commencing the interview process with us.

Learn more about our culture .

Why become an Oxbot?

Our team of experts in computer science, AI, robotics and machine learning is world-class, and together they’re solving the most exciting and important technological challenges of our times.

But as well as smarts, Oxbots have heart. Our diverse, multi-cultural crew is guided by a shared vision to bring the myriad benefits of autonomy to our customers and partners. And in a company that celebrates uniqueness as much as skill and experience, they do it with energy, conviction and a healthy dose of excitement, too.

If you are bold, creative and hyper skilled, come and create the future of autonomy with us at Oxa.