Sr. Program Manager, Commercial Facilities

About us

At the forefront of farming and food, UPSIDE Foods is innovating new ways to produce real meat, without the need to breed, feed and slaughter animals. Our process begins with an animal cell, which is cultivated and harvested as meat. The founding company of the industry, UPSIDE Foods is a mission-driven organization focused on bringing to meat lovers an authentic product that is truly humane, sustainably produced, nutritious and delicious! We are now expanding our team of dedicated professionals across disciplines to make better meat for a better world.

About this job

We are building a first-of-its-kind production facility to grow cultivated meat at the scale of tens of  millions of pounds, and we’re looking for a Senior Program Manager for Commercial Facilities to drive this and future complex, mission-critical, facility focused endeavors to successful, on-time, on-budget, outcomes.

This role will be a combination of program and project management, where your ability to zoom in and out will be critical to success. You’ll be making and managing plans with thousands of tasks while also strategically balancing team focus and risk in an environment where the critical path is ambiguous and can change every month based on unknowable unknowns. There will be your typical facility design and construction challenges, like managing internal and external resources (such as architecture, engineering, and general contractor firms) – and there will also be unique situations for the cultivated meat industry, like working with technical leaders in R&D to understand the timing and impact of applying new cellular or food processing technology at commercial scale for the first time in the world. 

To this role you’ll bring a keen and deep understanding of the craft of project and program management along with expertise in construction or facility start-up. You’ll have an abiding passion for spending a few years of focused attention to bring a massive new facility online – that will then feed millions of people for decades to come. Over your next 5-10 years, your efforts will trailblaze the “future of food production” facilities, so it’s important that you both come with experiences you can stand on but are also able to embrace agility and apply your toolkit in novel situations where you must redevelop your approach to fit the purpose ahead of us. No day will be the same. On some, you’ll be charting a course with milestones that no one’s ever written down before, let alone checked-off the list. On others you’ll be influencing and supporting individuals on your program team to hit the group’s goals despite radical uncertainty and unsure footing. Throughout it all, you’ll be balancing robust risk mitigation tactics against the need for speed and quality. Your manager, Todd, will provide guidance and feedback (often over an earthy Pu-er tea) and he’ll support you with a vision of success and the business challenges & hard questions that grow careers. 

Duties include

• Drive the successful delivery of the design, construction, and start-up of UPSIDE’s first large-scale commercial facility, managing deviations, escalations, and re-planning so that the team is always operating under “our best plan” and with high-performance 
• Proactively and objectively mitigate and communicate risks to prevent issues -- and when issues arise, rally the team to resolve the situation and minimize its consequences 
• Create partnerships across the dozens (and eventually hundreds) of people who will be key stakeholders, contributors, and operators of this facility such that any of them feel comfortable bringing you their concerns, knowing you’ll get them directed constructively
• Enhance our Enterprise PMO toolkit with your expertise and ongoing learning, and support and train junior staff and others within the organization who want to learn what we do 
• Travel regularly to the site of our new facility (in the US), and work with local teams and governments to expedite progress and troubleshoot challenges
• Duties will grow and change as we progress from design through construction to start-up and operations, and will include hands-on, on-site work at the future site of our facility

About you

• We value diversity. Brilliant program and project managers come from all backgrounds, united around their ability to build relationships, influence, communicate, problem-solve, and ultimately drive to goal achievement  
• A bachelor’s degree and 8+ years of work experience in project or program management or equivalent in a role focused on leading teams to achieve goals through influence, with ability to apply in a controlled food processing facility that contains a mix of biotech, fermentation, and automation technology. PREFERENCE: direct experience in capital projects in biotech / food facility start-ups, whether pilot plant or lab.
• Able to get to the heart of ambiguous problems, articulate goals and the levers to achieve them, then mobilize subject matter experts to go forward
• Proven ability to build rapport, trust, and alignment across leaders with a wide range of perspectives and intents, from individual contributors to VPs, technical or non-technical, using multiple modes of communication (virtual and in-person) 
• Detail-oriented and big-picture thinker, who can quickly tailor their approach to the situation and go from writing pristine facility-wide status reports one hour to the next of synthesizing myriad risks into a mitigation strategy that should have started yesterday 
• Adept partner for facility business and technical leaders, and able to drive with them the development of plans to bring dozens of moving parts into an aligned launch
• Highly resilient; you find strength and motivation when faced with unforeseen challenges and roadblocks because you have practiced techniques for staying calm, collected, and joyous

Note: this role is based out of Berkeley, California and it will involve travel within the United States, most often to the site of our new facility. This will likely be 25% travel but subject to change and periods of more and less frequent travel. Alternatively, a remote-first with 50-75% travel is open for consideration – please note in your cover letter if interested in that. 

UPSIDE Benefits!

• Stock options for all full-time incoming team members!
• 100% employer-paid healthcare premiums for team members (medical, dental, vision)
• Unlimited PTO / 3 Weeks PTO Accrued Annually
• DE&I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) Council and People Engagement Programs
• Company-sponsored learning & development opportunities

UPSIDE Foods is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Our company-wide mission is to create a product for everyone, so we are deeply committed to having teams and leaders that reflect this mission.