Strategic Project Lead

The role

The Strategic Project Lead owns the delivery of high-priority research and deployment projects. They partner with teams to define goals, build plans, align resources, and manage risks.

What you will do

• Own delivery of assigned research and deployment initiatives from intake through completion.
• Partner with researchers and stakeholders to define scope, success criteria, timelines, and operational requirements.
• Prioritize work and allocate resources across competing projects.
• Build execution plans that define staffing, robot allocation, dependencies, milestones, and delivery timelines.
• Direct project execution across Research Associates, Production Operations, and partner teams.
• Identify and resolve risks, bottlenecks, staffing gaps, and dependency conflicts.
• Drive project reviews, stakeholder communication, escalations, and delivery decisions.
• Improve planning, prioritization, and operational systems as the organization scales.

Required qualifications

• 2+ years of experience in program management, operations, technical project management, consulting, startup operations, or similar roles.
• Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives involving multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.
• Strong track record of translating ambiguous goals into executable plans and successful outcomes.
• Experience balancing competing priorities and making thoughtful resource-allocation decisions.
• Ability to quickly understand technical goals, operational constraints, and execution tradeoffs.
• Experience communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience supporting AI, robotics, hardware, or research organizations.
• Experience managing data collection, evaluation, annotation, or operational programs.
• Familiarity with robotics workflows and teleoperation environments.
• Experience building operational processes and scaling teams.
• Experience working directly with researchers, engineers, or technical product teams.

Before you apply

• Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

About the company

Physical Intelligence is developing foundation models and learning algorithms to power robots and physically-actuated devices. The company is bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world.