Program Manager

About Volta 

Volta Space Technologies is a fast-growing deep-tech startup building laser power transmission systems for space and defence. Our technology delivers power where cables, sunlight or batteries fall short, from spacecraft and the lunar surface to systems on the ground.

We are a fast, multidisciplinary team working with space agencies, defence customers and commercial partners in Canada, Europe and the United States. Things move quickly here: new programs start on short notice, priorities shift as contracts are won, and everyone owns real outcomes from their first week.

The role 

The Program Manager owns cost, schedule, contract performance and customer relationships across Volta's portfolio of space programs. You report to the Corporate CTO and work daily with the engineering team, finance, and our agency and industry customers.

The portfolio today spans multiple concurrent contracts of very different sizes, from mission studies to multi-year flight programs. You will take full ownership of the programs from day one and build the program management backbone (schedules, contract register, risk process, reporting cadence) that the company needs.

What this role is not: you are not the technical authority. Technical decisions, requirements ownership and design trades sit with engineering and systems engineering. Your job is to make sure those decisions are made on time, with the right information, within budget, and that every contractual commitment is met and documented.

Key responsibilities

Planning and control

• Build and maintain an integrated master schedule across all programs, with work breakdown structures, milestones, dependencies and shared-resource conflicts made visible.
• Track cost against budget per contract and per WBS element; forecast estimate-at-completion and flag variances early, with recovery options rather than just numbers.
• Allocate engineering effort across programs with the CTO and team leads, and make trade-offs between programs explicit when people or test facilities are oversubscribed.

Contract baselines and change packages

For every new contract and contract change, you develop and maintain the full management package that agencies and customers expect, such as:

• Work breakdown structures split into clearly defined work packages, each with a clear work package description: objectives, inputs, tasks, outputs, deliverables, owner, and start and end events.
• Project Gantt charts with clearly identified milestones and reviews.
• Payment milestone plans kept current through every contract amendment.
• Deliverables lists linking every deliverable to its milestone.
• Key personnel lists.
• Cost and manpower breakdowns in the customer's required pricing format, showing planned and actual hours per work package.

Contracts and customers

• Act as the primary day-to-day contact for program customers, including space agencies, defence customers and commercial partners.
• Own the contract lifecycle after award: kickoff, statements of work, change requests, deliverables lists, invoicing milestones, and closeout.
• Help run and close milestone and progress reviews (for example kickoff, progress meetings, PDR/CDR-type reviews, final reviews): prepare agendas and data packages, write minutes and track actions to closure.
• Produce contractual progress reports, final reports and management deliverables, drawing technical content from engineering and ensuring it is complete, accurate and on time.
• Manage subcontractors and key suppliers: purchase orders, flow-down of contract terms, schedule tracking and acceptance.

Risk and compliance

• Run a consistent risk and opportunity management process across the portfolio, with owners, mitigations and regular review.
• Ensure programs comply with export-control and contract security obligations in coordination with Volta's compliance lead.
• Maintain configuration and document control for contractual deliverables, and protect Volta's intellectual property and data rights in every deliverable.

Growth, capture and process

• Lead or co-lead follow-on and new-business proposals: identification, compliance matrices, schedules, cost and technical volumes, management sections, and red-team reviews.
• Assemble and coordinate industry consortia and prime-subcontractor relationships in bids and proposals;
• Report portfolio status to the leadership team monthly, and support investor and board reporting with program data.
• Set up lightweight, scalable program management tools and templates suited to a fast-growing team, and help hire and mentor future project coordinators.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, physics or a related technical field.
• At least 5 years of project or program management experience in space, aerospace or defence, including managing government-funded contracts.
• Direct experience managing contracts through the full lifecycle, including formal milestone reviews and contractual deliverables.
• Track record of running several concurrent projects of different sizes, contract types and customers at the same time.
• Working knowledge of common contract types (firm fixed price, milestone-based, cost-reimbursable) and of change control, invoicing and closeout.
• Hands-on skill with scheduling and cost tracking tools (for example MS Project, Smartsheet or equivalent), and with building WBS, schedules and estimates-at-completion yourself.
• Enough technical depth to follow engineering discussions, read a requirements specification or test report, and judge whether a technical deliverable is complete.
• Excellent written communication: reports, minutes and proposals that a customer can act on without follow-up questions.
• Professional proficiency in English; French is a strong asset.
• Eligibility for Controlled Goods Program registration and Government of Canada security screening, and eligibility to access export-controlled technical data under applicable rules.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in a startup or small company where you built program management processes rather than inherited them.
• Proposal management experience on competitive government bids, including cost volumes and compliance matrices.
• Familiarity with agency project management standards.
• Experience supporting the delivery of flight hardware or payloads, including acceptance reviews and handover to a launch or mission integrator.
• Hands-on experience with export-control compliance in day-to-day program execution.
• PMP, PgMP or equivalent certification.

Location: Montréal, Québec. On-site; occasional travel to customer sites.

How to apply: Send your CV including short note describing one program you managed (scope, budget, what went wrong and how you handled it).

Volta is an equal opportunity employer.