Technical Project Engineer - Airborne Optical Systems

Job Description

Job Description

Job Description

Technical Project EngineerAirborne Optical SystemsBurlington ON

**Please note that to be considered for any position at PV Labs, all candidates must be eligible to meet the requirements of the Canadian Controlled-Goods Program of the Defense Production Act, and be able to hold and maintain a Canadian Security Clearance. If you are not clear about your eligibility, please consult the Government of Canada website HERE**

At PVLabs, Project Engineers don't just manage schedules—they turn technical ambition into delivered reality.

You will operate at the center of a highly multidisciplinary organization, aligning Engineering Labs (Electrical, Mechanical, Software, Gateware, Systems), Operations, Leadership, and Customers around a shared execution plan. Your primary job is not task tracking—it is outcome ownership: clarifying priorities, managing risk, sequencing interdependencies, and driving decisions in complex, fast-moving environments.

This is a senior role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, brings technical credibility, and leads through influence rather than authority. You'll guide programs from early uncertainty through execution, balancing long-term system milestones with short-term tradeoffs in design, supply chain, and resourcing.

As PVLabs evolves from a custom-engineering model to a product-centric innovation company, you'll help shape how programs are planned, governed, and scaled across a growing portfolio of airborne ISR systems.

You will work closely with the PVLabs Engineering Council—a small group of Staff and Principal Engineers spanning all engineering disciplines.

Rather than micromanaging tasks, you'll rely on this group as a force multiplier: translating program priorities into executable engineering work, surfacing technical risk early, and sequencing interdependent deliverables.

Your success depends on strong relationships between Engineering, Operations, Finance, Production and Supply Chain, shared context, and mutual trust—combining your program-level ownership with their deep technical leadership.

• Own schedule, risk, and delivery performance across complex technical programs from kickoff through delivery
• Anticipate downstream impacts and resolve issues before they escalate
• Translate complex technical data into decision-ready insight for leadership and customers
• Develop and maintain integrated master schedules, technical baselines, risk frameworks and mechanisms that provide project visibility.
• Balance engineering ambition with production and contractual realities, supply chain constraints, and resourcing limits
• Cross-Functional Leadership across PVLabs' operating teams
  • Align Electrical, Mechanical, Software, Optics, and Gateware workstreams against milestones, business priorities and revenue targets
• Manage stakeholder communication with clarity, urgency, and sound judgment - ensuring we can answer the "So What".
• Decision & Dependency Management
  • Sequence and deconflict interdependent deliverables across disciplines
  • Drive tradeoff decisions grounded in realism and system-level thinking
• Process & Scale Enablement
  • Help shape PVLabs ERP-integrated project management approach, including resource modeling, material planning, and NRE forecasting
  • Contribute to how we plan, track, and communicate work as the organization scales

We value how people work as much as what they deliver. You are someone who:

• Sees both the big picture and the work-package detail
• Leads through credibility, diplomacy, and clarity rather than authority
• Is energized by complex, fast-moving technical environments
• Brings order to ambiguity through structured thinking and decisive action
• Thinks systemically across electro-mechanical-optical products
• Communicates confidently without ego—and know when to ask questions
• Is comfortable navigating tension, tradeoffs, and competing priorities
• Has worked where documentation, plans, and products evolve together

This role is intentionally NOT suited to generic project management backgrounds such as banking/financial services, consumer products, or technical infrastructures.

You've spent a meaningful portion of your career working inside complex, hardware-driven engineering environments—where systems are physical, failure is expensive, and integration risk is real. You understand that managing a program like this requires more than process fluency; it requires technical intuition, judgment under uncertainty, and credibility with engineers.

At least 5 consecutive years in engineering project management, NPI project engineering, or technical program management within aerospace, defense, ISR, robotics, advanced mechatronics, precision optics, avionics, or similarly complex physical systems

Direct experience delivering multi-disciplinary products involving combinations of software, electronics, FPGA/gateware, precision mechanics, optics, and production ramp-up

• Prototypes fly, move, or operate in real-world conditions
• Design decisions are constrained by physics, certification, supply chain, and manufacturability
• Rework is costly, schedules are unforgiving, and just iterate later is not an option

• Documentation, plans, and designs evolve together
• Technical teams are small, highly specialized, and deeply opinionated
• Program risk is driven as much by integration and sequencing as by task completion

This role will not be a good match if most of your experience comes from:

• Financial services, enterprise IT, SaaS, or purely digital products
• Public sector, policy, or compliance-driven program environments
• Consulting-heavy roles where delivery was abstracted from execution
• Large organizations where programs were insulated from hands-on engineering, production, or supplier realities

Those environments develop strong general PM skills—but they do not prepare you for the technical density, decision pressure, and cross-disciplinary integration required here.

You don't need to have worked on airborne gimbals specifically—but you do need to have lived inside complex engineered systems where:

• Software and hardware co-evolve
• Engineering trade-offs directly affect cost, schedule, and performance
• Programs succeed or fail based on sequencing, realism, and technical judgment—not reporting cadence

If you've helped shepherd a difficult system from concept through integration and delivery—and you know why it was hard—you're likely in the right territory.

Because you want to work on something hard, something meaningful, and you want to do it with people who are as driven, smart, and resourceful as you are. You work best in a place built around autonomy, mastery and purpose - and where resulting performance, trust, and accountability is measured in outputs, not hours.

Because you want to work where it matters.

At PV Labs, your work wont disappear into a slide deck. You'll be front and centre of a mission-driven engineering culture, designing high-performance, airborne stabilized imaging systems that outperform anything else in its class, by a significant margin.

Welcome to what may be the hardest job you've ever loved.

**Disclaimer PVLabs Ltd DOES NOT use Artificial Intelligence to scan resumes from applicants. We prefer to use humans to do this. We would similarly appreciate if humans applied to our jobs. Thank you in advance. **