Technical Program Manager

The Team:

Bellwether is the first prediction engine for the Earth and everything on it.

Bellwether is X’s moonshot to understand and anticipate changes across our planet.  The team is harnessing AI and Earth information data to understand the probability of severe weather and predict its impact on communities, landscapes, and the built environment. Bellwether partners with the public and private sector to help with disaster planning, response, and recovery.

The Bellwether team is pioneering a new way to apply AI to the physical world and  help society respond more efficiently to natural disasters, mitigate the impact of catastrophic events, and better understand how our planet changes. The team is currently focused on three key areas: wildfire risk modeling and mitigation tools, insurance for natural disasters and scene assessment tools to support first responders after natural disasters.

The Role:

As a Technical Program Manager on the Bellwether team, you will be key to the team’s growth and scale by leading and driving complex and highly technical programs at the intersection of geospatial data, machine learning, and agentic systems. You will bring organization, consistency, and frameworks to a number of technical initiatives across the team, including shaping technical program strategy, helping to drive execution, and ensuring successful delivery of key technical milestones for a project with the potential for significant global impact. This role requires strong technical judgment, exceptional cross-functional leadership, an ownership mentality, and the ability to navigate uncertainty in a fast-paced, exploratory environment typical of Google X.

How you will 10X impact:

• Program Strategy and Definition: Contribute to developing the technical roadmap, goals, and success metrics for Bellwether's geospatial ML/agentic initiatives. Translate high-level moonshot ideas into actionable program plans and drive alignment on priorities across the team and vendors.
• Technical Program Leadership: Own the end-to-end lifecycle for multiple inflight, complex technical programs, including planning, scoping, execution, and delivery. In concert with the engineering team, proactively identify and manage technical risks, dependencies, and opportunities across multiple workstreams.
• Geospatial and ML Technical Acumen: Apply comprehensive technical judgment to evaluate engineering scope and resource needs helping engineering leadership make technical trade-offs in geospatial data processing, machine learning model development (e.g., foundation models, generative AI), and agent design. Facilitate technical discussions and drive consensus on architectural decisions. While you aren’t an engineer, you should be able to ‘get in the weeds’ with our engineers to help drive this work.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: In concert with the team’s Operations Lead, build and lead highly effective cross-functional initiatives, fostering collaboration between Research Scientists, Software Engineers, Product Managers, UX Designers, and external partners. Ensure clear communication and alignment on goals, priorities, and progress.
• Execution Excellence: In concert with the team’s Operations Lead and Head of Software, implement and optimize program management processes, tools, and best practices to enhance team efficiency and velocity within the unique Google X environment. This includes program schedules, resources, and budgets where appropriate, adapting plans as new information and challenges emerge.
• Continuous Improvement: Proactively identify, own, and implement continuous improvement opportunities in technical workflows, development processes, and team effectiveness to accelerate Bellwether's progress.

Hands-on: As a member of a team that is actively iterating and developing technology for real-world partners, this role is very hands-on: you’ll be expected to understand and use the latest AI tools such as Google Antigravity and others. 

What you should have:

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field (e.g., Computer Science, Engineering, Geospatial Science) or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in technical program management, leading complex software or machine learning-driven projects.
• Demonstrated experience with the full lifecycle of software development, including design, implementation, testing, and launch.
• Proven ability to exercise strong technical judgment, understanding technical architecture, systems, and trade-offs.
• Experience working with cross-functional teams in a fast-paced, ambiguous, and rapidly evolving environment.

It'd be great if you also had these:

• Masters in a related technical field.
• Experience with machine learning product development, including model training, evaluation, and deployment, especially in areas like computer vision, large language models, or foundation models.
• Familiarity with agentic systems, AI agents, or reinforcement learning.
• Ability to break down highly ambiguous problems into solvable components and drive them to completion.
• Exemplary communication and presentation skills, capable of articulating complex technical concepts and program status to diverse audiences, including senior leadership.