Sr Technical Automation Program Leader

Based primarily at our state-of-the-art Clifton, NJ Laboratory, we are seeking a highly strategic, proactive Senior Technical Automation Program Manager to drive our automation pipeline from initial spark to enterprise-scale deployment. In this role, you will not just manage existing projects — you will actively scout our laboratory network to identify high-impact automation opportunities, build robust business cases to justify capital investments, lead pilot and Proof of Concept (POC) initiatives, and design the long-term roadmap to scale these technologies across the Quest network. This role requires an execution-focused leader who is equally comfortable presenting to executive leadership and working on-site alongside local lab operations during critical go-live windows. The position has one direct report. The ideal candidate will be hybrid out of our Clifton, NJ site.

Responsibilities

Strategic Opportunity, Business Case & Piloting

• Ideation & Opportunity Discovery: Proactively analyze laboratory workflows across the enterprise to identify bottlenecks, labor constraints, and high-volume manual processes where robotic or automation technology can drive significant value.
• Business Case Development: Build comprehensive financial and operational business cases (including ROI, payback periods, throughput gains, and risk assessments) to secure executive sponsorship and funding for new automation initiatives.
• Pilot & Proof of Concept (POC) Leadership: Design, launch, and lead pilot programs and POCs in select laboratories to validate technical feasibility, refine operational workflows, and gather baseline performance metrics.
• Enterprise Scaling Strategy: Develop and execute the strategic roadmap to industrialize and scale successful pilot technologies seamlessly across Quest’s broader laboratory network (including legacy RBUS, EUBs, and NextGen facilities).

Engineering Delivery & Lifecycle Management

• Cross-Discipline Program Delivery: Lead the effective and efficient delivery of System and Hardware Product Development programs, working closely with automation vendors, IT, and procurement teams.
• Schedule & Lifecycle Management: Develop and manage complex project schedules across all hardware disciplines, including Mechanical, Electrical, IT, Integration to LIS, Firmware, Safety, Regulatory, and HW Test Engineering.
• Goal Definition & Performance: Partner with Operations teams, Procurement, System Reliability, IT, and other key stakeholders to define clear project goals that improve performance, reduce cost, and reduce installation cycle time.
• Technical Decision Drive: Drive consensus on technical decisions across engineering groups and ensure appropriate resources are employed to deliver high-quality, maintainable systems.

Collaboration, Vendor & Field Support

• Solution Integration: Collaborate cross-functionally to support solution development and system integration, including complex hardware/software integrations.
• Requirements Decomposition: Lead the partnership between Enterprise Automation, third-party automation vendors, and internal IT to develop and decompose comprehensive functional requirements.
• Field Support: Triage, prioritize, and execute against incoming field requests for enterprise automation support.
• Cross-Functional Liaison: Serve as the primary liaison between Systems Engineering, Software Engineering, Deployment Engineering, Solutions, Manufacturing & Supply Chain, Customer Support, and various program verticals.

Risk, Execution & Communication

• Risk Mitigation: Identify, assess, track, and mitigate issues and risks at the program level to keep critical path timelines on schedule.
• Project Documentation: Create, maintain, and disseminate project information, status reports, and key performance data to stakeholders.
• Stakeholder Facilitation: Drive effective teamwork, communication, and collaboration across multiple groups with competing priorities, managing relationships both internal and external to Enterprise Automation.
• On-Site Deployment & Go-Live Support: Travel to laboratory sites (up to 30%) during critical deployment phases to oversee physical integration, coordinate site acceptance testing (SAT), lead troubleshooting efforts, and ensure successful operational go-live.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• Experience: 10+ years of automation, robotics and hardware engineering experience.
• Direct Team Engagement: 7+ years of working directly with engineering teams.
• Ambiguity & Speed: Experience delivering products against plan in a fast-paced, multi-disciplined, distributed-responsibility, and highly ambiguous environment.
• Project Portfolio: Experience managing multiple projects in parallel through prioritization, planning, task delegation, and critical path management.
• Communication & Travel: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills to speak with technical and non-technical audiences, and the flexibility to travel up to 30% for on-site support.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strategic Planning: Proven track record of developing business cases, financial models, and strategic scaling roadmaps for multi-million dollar technology investments.
• Product Lifecycle: 7+ years of full product lifecycle experience, specifically taking custom or commercial off-the-shelf robotics solutions from prototype to high-volume production.
• Technical Depth: Experience in the mechanical or controls field, or direct experience with robotics work cells and their control systems.
• Regulatory & Infrastructure: Basic fundamental knowledge of mechanical and electrical design to channel dependencies with partner teams in Manufacturing Test, Reliability, Sourcing, Hardware Quality, Safety, Compliance, EMC, Firmware, Security, and Networking.
• Certifications- Bonus: 3+ years of program/project management experience or a Project Management Professional (PMP) certificate or MBA degree.