Vice President of Commercial Program Management

VP, Commercial Program Management

Parallel is bringing autonomous, battery-electric rail vehicles to freight. Signing a customer is the start of the most important part of our commercial motion: every deployment pulls together engineering, operations, safety, regulatory, manufacturing, supply chain, and field teams, plus the customer, their rail partners, and outside vendors.

We're hiring a VP of Commercial Program Management. You are accountable for converting signed commercial contracts into successful, revenue-generating customer operations. Reporting to our Chief Commercial Officer, you'll take each signed contract and turn it into a live, revenue-generating deployment: one integrated plan, one owner, no dropped balls between teams. You'll build the program management function from the ground up, set the playbook every future deployment runs on, and be the single-threaded owner from signature to launching operations.

Responsibilities

• Own every customer deployment from contract signature through go-live and steady-state operations, as the single accountable leader across all internal and external teams
• Translate contract commitments (scope, milestones, SLAs, acceptance criteria) into an integrated master plan covering engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, safety, regulatory, field operations, and customer success
• Run a structured contract-to-deployment handoff to ensure we execute on the deal as detailed in the partnership agreement
• Coordinate external stakeholders, including customers, railroad and port partners, infrastructure and charging vendors, contractors, and regulators, and keep them aligned on a shared timeline
• Build and lead the commercial program management function: hire and develop program managers, define roles, and scale the team as deployment volume grows
• Create the deployment playbook: stage gates, readiness reviews, RACI, risk registers, change control, and standard templates that make each deployment faster and more predictable than the last
• Surface risks, dependencies, and resource conflicts early; drive tradeoff decisions with functional leaders and escalate to the executive team with clear options
• Own deployment reporting: portfolio dashboards, milestone health, schedule and budget variance, and customer-facing status updates
• Partner with Engineering and Product to feed field learnings back into the roadmap and with Finance on deployment cost, margin, and revenue recognition milestones
• Serve as a senior, trusted counterpart to customer executives throughout delivery, protecting the relationship and setting up expansion

What Success Looks Like

• First 30 days: You’ve taken command of the highest-priority deployments, establish the critical path and build an integrated master plan based on current and impending deals
• First 60 days: You’ve published v1 of the deployment playbook, to include stage gates, readiness checklist, RACI, risk register, and change-control process, formalized the Sales-to-Deployment integration plan, and built KPIs and launch a portfolio dashboard showing milestone health, top risks, and owners for every active program
• First 90 days: You’ve run every active deployment on the playbook with an integrated master schedule driving execution across the company

Basic Qualifications

• 12+ years in program management, deployment, or delivery leadership, including 5+ years leading cross-functional programs at the director level or above
• Track record of taking complex hardware, infrastructure, or physical-technology systems from contract to field deployment with external customers
• Experience coordinating multiple internal functions and external parties (customers, vendors, contractors, regulators) against contractual milestones
• Built or scaled a program or deployment management function, including hiring and developing program managers
• Comfortable presenting to and negotiating with customer executives and your own executive team
• Strong command of integrated schedules, risk management, change control, and program financials
• Ability to travel to customer and deployment sites as needed

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in rail, freight, logistics, ports, autonomous vehicles, energy, or other heavily regulated infrastructure industries
• Experience at a growth-stage or venture-backed hard-tech company, especially taking first-of-a-kind deployments live
• Background working with safety cases, regulatory approvals, or operating permits as part of a deployment
• Engineering degree or technical background; PMP or similar certification is a plus, not a requirement
• Prior experience in a commercial or customer-facing leadership role alongside delivery ownership

Target Salary Range: 200000 - 300000 USD