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Sr. Program Manager

Unlock employer Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Posted: 20 Jun 2026

Financial

  • Estimate: $120k - $150k*
  • Zero income tax location

Accessibility

  • Office Only
  • Apply from abroad
  • Visa Provided

Requirements

  • Experience: Senior
  • English: Professional

Position

As the UAE Sr. Program Manager, you will play a critical role in balancing innovation and practical execution across the Omen program. You will be deeply intertwined in a highly complex global program, driving strategic decision-making, evaluating program milestones, and managing appropriate resourcing in-country. You are expected to quickly learn technical concepts and leverage your technical knowledge alongside your program management skills to lead cross-functional efforts and drive significant program impact.

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Deploying our Maneuver Dominance capabilities requires a thorough understanding of mission requirements, thoughtful orchestration among the company teams and external stakeholders, and meticulous planning amidst ambiguity. You thrive in uncertain environments and create order out of chaos. Your support and collaboration with the Omen lead Program Manager based in Costa Mesa, HQ will encompass aspects like Air Vehicle, Mission Systems, Support Systems, and Production Systems.

What You'll Do

  • Stakeholder Engagement: Build and maintain relationships with internal stakeholders, external clients, and industry partners to gather insights, align objectives, and secure buy-in for strategic initiatives. Act as the local liaison for UAE relationships, including subsystem suppliers, in-country test organizations, establishment of facilities, and coordination of customer engagements. Communicate internally the outputs of these efforts including cost forecasts, schedule, resource requirements, risks, and opportunities.
  • Enable Cross Team Collaboration: Manage, unblock, and accelerate cross-team projects spanning multiple teams and initiatives. Collaborate closely with leads to ensure vision alignment and seamless execution through development and into production, including test operations.
  • Technical Ownership: Drive technical outcomes through a meticulous understanding of system performance, managing risks and opportunities with the Engineering leads, using metrics to derive insights into areas for improvement, quantifying the improvements made through investment in those areas, and maintaining a clear understanding of the state of the system that can be communicated to the customer.
  • Execute Autonomously: Autonomously execute on broad and/or ambiguous requirements from external clients while demonstrating high ownership on all pieces of work. Become a trusted partner to the company’s engineers.
  • Shape Growth Opportunities: Support the drafting of technical proposals, ensuring that potential projects and scaling opportunities are accurately scoped, estimated, and aligned with the organization's capabilities and strategic goals.
  • Strategic Planning & Execution: Translate strategic business goals into actionable project plans, setting clear milestones, and driving initiatives from conception through to successful completion, ensuring they deliver intended outcomes and add value to the business. Oversee the UAE allocation of personnel, budget, and other resources to ensure successful execution of these initiatives.

Required Qualifications

  • 8+ years of experience in a customer-facing program management role and/or systems engineering experience, preferably in the defense, national security, or aerospace domains.
  • Proven experience leading a technical team of peers to field hardware or software products to real operating environments throughout the product development lifecycle, including testing.
  • Proven experience leading a product and manufacturing team of peers through initial low rate production.
  • Solid technical aptitude and demonstrated individual contributions to technical designs, software development lifecycle, challenges, and risks; ability to work closely and effectively with engineering teams.
  • Ability to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders across a wide range of technical comfort and at all levels.
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
  • Strong technical, analytical, and quantitative skills with the ability to use data and metrics to back up assumptions, recommendations, and drive decisions.
  • Must be able to work through ambiguity, possess a roll up your sleeves attitude, and drive forward progress.
  • Experience working with international suppliers and customers.
  • Must be able to obtain a Secret Clearance.
  • Must be able to travel up to 50% of the time.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, computer science, or related field preferred.
  • Experience defining new facilities or manufacturing spaces.
  • Experience with tools like JIRA and Confluence.
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