Engineering Program Manager- SoftGoods

Why SoftGoods?

Apple’s SoftGoods Engineering team is relatively new to Apple. We work with materials like textiles, silicone, soft polymers, and magnets. Our mission is to use these incredible materials to enable new product categories, and to enhance Apple’s existing product lines.

Bringing Apple engineering and precision to products made of soft materials is an exciting challenge and requires a creative and open-minded approach. We have a talented team of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. We all work together in a beautiful customized lab where we design, engineer and develop the best softgoods products in the world.

If this sounds like an exciting challenge, we hope you will consider a place in our team and encourage you to consider this role.

What is the role?

We are looking for an enthusiastic and highly motivated engineering project manager (EPM) with a proven consumer product development track record to work cross functionally with our Softgoods Product

Design Team.

In this role you will drive the day-to-day activities to meet the overall program objectives related to mechanical design, development, and engineering validation. You will build and maintain project schedules, assess and mitigate risk, and lead cross functional teams via great communication and diligent oversight.

You will enable team success by crafting and monitoring a streamlined development plan, managing critical path, and driving timely issue resolution. You will lead team meetings, document action items, drive followup, and be accountable for communicating development and schedule status to senior management.

Your role will include coordinating with Product Design, Industrial Design (ID), Operations, Reliability and other key cross functional teams. You will understand technical issues and drive them to closure by bringing together key partners and facilitating problem solving and decision-making. You will be empowered to build great relationships across high-energy teams.

You will work closely with manufacturing suppliers and OEM partners.

The role will require up to 20% international travel to support manufacturing builds in Asia.

Minimum Qualifications

• BS ME or equivalent
• Project management experience related to developing computer accessories or related consumer products
• Experience working closely with product design and other cross functional teams to drive closure of technical issues and communicate risk
• Experience creating schedules, managing program finances, and tracking budget
• Experience fostering relationships with manufacturing suppliers and coordinating development builds
• You are someone who is analytical, professionally assertive, and exhibit excellent attention to detail
• Strong verbal & written communication and executive level presentation skills
• You exhibit a deeply curious mindset about new ideas

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as a practicing mechanical engineer or related product development role prior to becoming a project manager
• Experience working with industrial designers or other similarly creative product developers
• Prior experience working with soft goods materials and processes (synthetics, textiles)
• Prior experience traveling internationally to work closely with manufacturing suppliers