Senior Program Manager (Product Development)

About Us : AI compute is hitting a hard physical wall, and memory bottlenecks are throttling the entire industry. Founded in October 2024 and backed by €57M in funding, Vertical Compute is solving this with proprietary Vertical Integrated Memory (VIM™) chiplets, making AI hardware faster, greener, and vastly more scalable. We are an interdisciplinary team transforming breakthrough semiconductor physics into commercial reality.

About the role:

You will oversee key technical initiatives to deliver our unified hardware and software platform. You will play a crucial role in transitioning products from initial development into commercial production. Taking full ownership of execution, you will bridge technology delivery with strategic commercial goals.

Key responsibilities:

• Own the cross-functional execution framework for complex silicon and software development programs from early architecture through tapeout, post-silicon bring-up, and release.
• Partner closely with hardware, software, architecture, and product teams to drive alignment on milestones, roadmaps, and execution reviews.
• Establish scalable execution practices, manage program dependencies, and proactively mitigate risks across hardware and software integration efforts.
• Manage cross-functional dependencies and program delivery flow to ensure seamless execution.
• Drive regular program-level product demonstrations to validate milestones and gather stakeholder feedback.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives to refine operational processes and team coordination.
• Proactively identify and resolve architectural or organizational blockers, managing risk and maintaining relentless progress from initial exploration to customer acceptance.
• Identify execution risks, lead risk mitigation plans, and drive trade-off decisions across scope, schedule, resources, and quality

About the team:

This role is part of the operations team, partnering closely with our cross-functional engineering teams in System & Product and Memory Design. We foster a highly collaborative, inclusive environment where strong alignment, high transparency and seamless team coordination are central to our shared success.

• About who you are:
• Masters or higher in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics or a related technical field. Ability to understand the system and the sub-systems.
• Strong technical foundation in hardware design, memory architecture, advanced packaging, chiplets, and AI acceleration technologies.
• Proven track record in technical program management within the semiconductor industry, with experience delivering complex products that integrate novel hardware with firmware.
• Data-driven; actively leveraging AI tools in daily workflows.
• Relentless Improvement Mindset.
• Adaptive and servant leadership style and problem-solving fluency in a cross-functional organization working on complex hardware-software integration.
• Fluency in English with strong written and verbal communication abilities.

Location: Leuven (Belgium) / Grenoble (France) / Remote. Regular travel is expected to support effective and efficient collaboration and keep pace with our rapid growth.