Program Manager (Cleared)

About Swoop:

Swoop Technologies has a mission to organize and make accessible the world’s military and critical infrastructure. We are building a distributed operating system, SwoopOS, that decomposes the world’s equipment into a distributed robotic embodiment upon which a new generation of distributed systems, autonomous systems, and agentic AI can be built and deployed using our SDK, Valhalla, and operated via our browser, Surf. Imagine the world’s equipment - consisting of the electrical grid, communications architectures, manufacturing facilities, and militaries as a trapped supply of inputs possessing the potential to ensure Western military advantage, sovereign control of economically competitive manufacturing capacity, or the creation of a grid that fosters energy dominance. Swoop is liberating these trapped assets, allowing them to contribute to the world’s future as a series of building blocks to be combined at the speed of software, limited by only the hard constraints of physics and the soft constraints of safety. That is what Swoop is building. Not in the data center or cloud or edge on-premise computing node. In the physical world.

Your Impact:

Swoop approaches implementation of our technology for a customer and the program surrounding it as a mission. It is our job to execute the mission quickly, quietly, and calmly amidst the known chaos and adversity we expect to encounter along the way. In this way, programs look like understanding the intelligence we have about the customer, planning how we will execute, and executing deployments. We do not value the typical approach to program management with waterfall charts, gantt charts, reverence to powerpoints, and frustrating reversion to time, schedule, performance. As PM, you should approach this like a deployment. You should seek to foster the construction of as small a team as possible to minimize our footprint and disruption to the customer. You should know your team is part of the broader Swoop team, and ensure the culture of execution, accountability, relentless delivery, perseverance regardless of circumstances, and competitive teammates drives all activities. You should want to do anything and everything to make the team successful. You should foster a culture of AARs/hot washes to constantly make us better. You should want to tear the book up on program management, and do it so much better.

What You’ll Do:

• Manage programs as if you were deploying a squadron into theatre.

• Know what the mission is, how Swoop’s products will be implemented, and what the intended impact to the user(s) is - and then relentlessly lead the execution of the delivery.

• Do all the little things so that your team rarely feels the noise around them and focuses upon the mission at hand (ex. buffer the team from customer politics, ensure travel and logistics are squared, celsius/caffeine is always in supply, communications back to SwoopHQ are handled, etc).

• Communicate and coordinate with multiple internal stakeholders - Engineering, Deployment, Ops, Support, Revenue.

• Be part of early engagements with the customer to shape the missions and influence what and how we will deliver Swoop into their lives to make a positive impact.

• Be responsible for the outcome. Do not rely on the engineer to know the technical details, instead, voraciously want to learn so you can master the details. Do not rely upon Swoop leadership to de-escalate a tension on site, be the leader, build the relationships, and work the problem.

• Communicate the resources you need, why you need them, and then allocate them for measurable effect. Take pride in explaining how the resources you allocated translated into impact.

• Manage and lead tabletop exercises prior to customer deployments. Lead hotwashes after deployments. Create a feedback loop where the hotwashes lead directly into improved training, planning, and delivery for the next deployment.

• Ability and interest to travel. Up to 50+%

You Should Have:

• 10-15 years military or intelligence experience, in a leadership role. You should be a O3-O6 with hunger to keep going. If you are a general officer or flag officer, and you want to go back to your hayday, hell yeah.

• Past experience leading a unit, squadron, etc. into a deployment - from spin up, to managing the team and camaraderie in theatre, to getting people home and planning the next cycle.

• An active US security clearance. If your clearance just lapsed (<2 years) we can work it.

• Bachelor's degree in something that required problem solving or critical thinking. In the absence of it, you should have a passion for what you studied, and still retain a curiosity towards it.

• A passion for problem solving and ability to move projects forward through deadlocks and constraints by finding solutions reached by good judgment.

• Excellent oral and written communication skills, and a willingness and ability to alter communication patterns with different types of personalities. Regardless of who you communicate with, your principles, integrity, and character never waver.

• You like technology. You tinker. You may know how to program, you may struggle to find the on-button to a tv. But you seek to learn the technology and master it regardless.

• The ability to provide feedback without being condescending. Lift the room up, when things get messy, you get calm. Set a standard for how we treat each other, and then champion those that exceed it.

Swoop Technologies is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other factor protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.