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San Jose, California, United States
Onsite
About Altera
At Altera™, our independence as the world’s largest pure‑play FPGA solutions provider gives us the focus, speed, and agility to innovate without compromise. With more than four decades of industry‑leading FPGA expertise, our singular mission is to deliver the programmable technologies that help customers differentiate, innovate, and scale across rapidly evolving markets like AI, cloud, networking, and edge. As an independent company, we move faster, invest deeper, and partner more closely—empowering our teams to drive breakthrough innovation and shape the future of the FPGA industry.
About the Role
We are seeking a highly experienced Senior EDA Physical Design Technical Program Manager to lead complex, high-impact technical programs across our Physical Design, EDA, CAD, and semiconductor engineering organizations. This role will operate at a senior level, partnering directly with engineering leadership, architects, software developers, physical design engineers, CAD/EDA teams, product teams, and other cross-functional stakeholders to drive execution of strategic initiatives supporting next-generation FPGA technologies and design automation solutions.
The Senior EDA TPM will have broad ownership of programs spanning multiple engineering organizations and will be responsible for driving programs from strategy and definition through execution, delivery, and operationalization. This individual will establish program structure, define execution strategies, identify critical dependencies, manage technical and organizational risks, and ensure alignment across teams with competing priorities.
The ideal candidate brings a strong combination of technical program management leadership, semiconductor/EDA domain expertise, and demonstrated experience leading large, highly complex engineering programs. The ability to understand technical challenges, anticipate execution risks, influence senior engineering leaders, and drive decisions without direct authority is essential.
This role requires a high degree of autonomy and leadership. The successful candidate will serve as a trusted program partner to senior engineering leadership, provide executive-level visibility into strategic programs, and proactively identify opportunities to improve organizational execution, processes, and engineering efficiency.
Responsibilities
Lead end-to-end execution of highly complex, strategic technical programs supporting EDA, Physical Design, CAD, semiconductor development, and next-generation FPGA technologies.
Own program strategy, scope, objectives, success criteria, execution plans, milestones, dependencies, and delivery commitments across multiple engineering organizations.
Partner closely with senior engineering leaders and architects to translate business and technical objectives into executable program strategies and roadmaps.
Drive cross-functional execution across Physical Design, CAD/EDA, Software Engineering, Architecture, RTL Design, Verification, Validation, Product Engineering, and other engineering organizations.
Lead programs involving significant technical complexity, organizational dependencies, resource constraints, evolving requirements, and competing priorities.
Establish and maintain integrated program plans encompassing schedules, milestones, critical paths, dependencies, resource requirements, deliverables, and risk mitigation strategies.
Identify critical technical and organizational risks early, develop mitigation strategies, and drive issues to resolution with appropriate stakeholders and leadership.
Proactively identify cross-program dependencies and potential execution conflicts, driving alignment and prioritization across engineering organizations.
Establish program operating mechanisms, including executive reviews, engineering checkpoints, milestone reviews, dashboards, metrics, escalation paths, and decision-making forums.
Develop executive-level reporting and communication that clearly articulates program health, accomplishments, risks, dependencies, resource constraints, decisions required, and recovery plans.
Present program status and recommendations to senior engineering leadership and executive stakeholders, including clear escalation of issues requiring leadership decisions.
Influence senior technical stakeholders and engineering leaders without direct authority to drive alignment, accountability, and timely execution.
Facilitate resolution of complex technical and organizational issues by bringing the appropriate stakeholders together, driving data-based decisions, and maintaining momentum toward program objectives.
Partner with engineering management to assess resource requirements, staffing constraints, technical priorities, and tradeoffs necessary to meet program commitments.
Drive prioritization and sequencing decisions across multiple engineering teams when resource or schedule constraints create competing priorities.
Develop and maintain multi-quarter and/or multi-year technical roadmaps for strategic EDA and Physical Design initiatives in partnership with engineering leadership.
Coordinate major technology transitions, methodology changes, tool deployments, infrastructure initiatives, and engineering process improvements across distributed organizations.
Apply strong understanding of semiconductor development and Physical Design methodologies to identify technical dependencies, anticipate execution challenges, and effectively communicate with engineering teams.
Drive programs involving EDA tool flows, design methodologies, physical implementation, timing closure, design automation, infrastructure, and engineering productivity.
Establish program-level metrics and operational mechanisms to measure execution effectiveness, identify trends, and improve predictability.
Drive continuous improvement of program management practices, engineering processes, and organizational operating mechanisms.
Identify systemic execution challenges and develop scalable solutions that improve engineering productivity, quality, predictability, and time-to-market.
Lead cross-functional retrospectives and ensure lessons learned are translated into measurable process improvements.
Mentor and provide guidance to other Technical Program Managers and project leads, helping establish consistent program management practices across the organization.
Foster a culture of accountability, transparency, proactive risk management, and cross-functional collaboration across geographically distributed engineering teams.
Operate effectively in an environment where requirements, priorities, technologies, and organizational structures may evolve rapidly.
Salary Range
The pay range below is for Bay Area California only. Actual salary may vary based on a number of factors including job location, job-related knowledge, skills, experiences, trainings, etc. We also offer incentive opportunities that reward employees based on individual and company performance.
$166,900 - $241,000 USD
We use artificial intelligence to screen, assess, or select applicants for the position. Applicants must be eligible for any required U.S. export authorizations.
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Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering Management, or a related technical discipline, and 10+ years of relevant experience; or Master's degree in a related field and 8+ years of relevant experience.
10+ years of experience in Technical Program Management, Engineering Program Management, or a related technical program leadership role.
8+ years of experience managing complex, cross-functional technical programs within the semiconductor, FPGA, ASIC, EDA, hardware, software, or related technology industry.
8+ years of experience managing program schedules, milestones, critical paths, dependencies, risks, and deliverables across multiple engineering teams.
5+ years of experience working directly with semiconductor development, EDA, CAD, Physical Design, or related engineering organizations.
5+ years of experience presenting program status, risks, schedules, and execution plans to engineering leadership and/or executive stakeholders.
5+ years of experience using program/project management tools such as Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or equivalent platforms.
Preferred Qualifications
Master's degree or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering Management, Business Administration (MBA), or a related technical field.
10+ years of experience specifically within the semiconductor, FPGA, ASIC, EDA, CAD, or electronic design automation industry.
Direct experience supporting Physical Design, CAD/EDA, Design Automation, or semiconductor implementation organizations.
Strong understanding of Physical Design methodologies, including floorplanning, placement, routing, clock tree synthesis, timing analysis and closure, signal integrity, power optimization, physical verification, design implementation, and design convergence.
Experience working with industry-standard EDA tools and flows from vendors such as Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens EDA, or equivalent.
Experience managing programs involving EDA tool development, tool qualification, flow development, methodology development, design infrastructure, or engineering productivity initiatives.
Experience leading programs across the full semiconductor development lifecycle, from architecture and design through implementation, verification, validation, and productization.
Experience managing multiple concurrent strategic programs with significant organizational, technical, and schedule dependencies.
Experience developing multi-quarter or multi-year engineering roadmaps and translating strategic objectives into measurable execution plans.
Experience driving organizational transformation, process improvement, methodology changes, or large-scale engineering initiatives.
Demonstrated experience operating effectively in highly matrixed organizations and influencing stakeholders across multiple levels of leadership.
Experience managing programs with significant resource, budget, or business impact.
Experience establishing and improving engineering operating mechanisms, governance models, and program management frameworks.
Experience mentoring Technical Program Managers, project managers, or engineering program leads.
PMP, PgMP, Agile, Scrum Master, or related program/project management certification is a plus.
