The Role
The Technical Program Manager will oversee customer projects in hardware development, drive platform engagement, and present results to executives, while enhancing customer value and managing cross-team collaborations.
Summary Generated by Built In
Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world’s most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles—and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.
As AI infrastructure demand accelerates, manufacturers are under increasing pressure to bring products to market faster while maintaining quality and yield. Instrumental plays a critical role in helping these teams gain visibility into their manufacturing processes, identify failures faster, and make data-driven decisions.
We’re looking for a Technical Customer Success Executive who brings a rare combination of deep manufacturing expertise, technical problem-solving ability, and customer leadership. You’ll partner directly with some of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers, helping them realize measurable business impact from the Instrumental platform. This is not a traditional customer success role—you’ll be hands-on with customer deployments, manufacturing data, and production challenges while also building relationships with engineering leaders and executives.
Key Responsibilities / What You’ll Own
- Drive customer outcomes and platform adoption: Own a portfolio of strategic customers and partner with engineering, manufacturing, quality, and operations teams to accelerate NPI timelines, improve first pass yield, and maximize the value of the Instrumental platform.
- Lead customer deployments and manufacturing programs: Roll up your sleeves to launch new programs and production lines. You’ll configure customer projects, support station deployments, run correlations, review discoveries and monitors, and ensure manufacturing data is accurate, actionable, and driving real improvements.
- Translate technical insights into business impact: Analyze manufacturing and test data to identify opportunities, quantify improvements in metrics like yield, failure analysis time, throughput, and quality, and communicate the business impact to customer stakeholders.
- Build executive relationships and drive strategic growth: Lead quarterly business reviews with VP-level stakeholders, showcasing customer outcomes, identifying opportunities for expansion, and ensuring Instrumental remains a strategic partner.
- Act as the voice of the customer: Understand customer challenges, technical needs, and future roadmaps. Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Sales, Data Quality, and company leadership to influence priorities and deliver maximum customer value.
- Operate with ownership and urgency: Customer challenges rarely fit neatly into a playbook. You’ll take initiative, navigate ambiguity, and do whatever it takes to deliver results for customers.
Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience in hardware development, manufacturing, test, quality, reliability, or technical program management within the electronics industry
- 2+ years of experience working directly with customers, manufacturing partners, or cross-functional teams with responsibility for technical outcomes
- Deep understanding of manufacturing KPIs including yield, failure analysis, throughput, quality, and production readiness
- Experience analyzing electronics test, functional, or reliability data to identify root causes and drive improvements
- Ability to translate complex technical problems into clear business impact and communicate effectively with executive stakeholders
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience creating data-driven presentations that influence decisions
- Proven ability to build trust, influence teams without direct authority, and drive outcomes in ambiguous startup environments
- Strategic mindset with the ability to identify opportunities, build action plans, and execute with urgency
We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, supports each other, and is energized by having impact. We value passion for the hardware industry and the ability to learn. We are in our Palo Alto office at least 3 days a week and take any opportunity to travel to customer sites across the globe.
The following is a representative annual overall total compensation for this position within the Bay Area: $180,000-250,000. In addition, job level & salary opportunity is evaluated through our interview process – we review experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.
Instrumental is proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.
At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. All employees are expected to comply with company security and privacy policies and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.
Skills Required
- 2+ years in technical program management focused on hardware development or manufacturing
- 8+ years overall experience in hardware development and manufacturing
- Data analysis and failure analysis skills, particularly with electronics data
- Strong communication skills for executive presentations
- Ability to manage and orchestrate cross-functional teams
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The Company
What We Do
Accelerate product maturity, de-risk ramp, and improve yields. Instrumental helps you find and fix issues you didn't even know were there.
