Sr Customer Program Manager - 2245

Company Description

KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.) is the US-based subsidiary of KIOXIA Corporation, a leading worldwide supplier of flash memory and solid state drives (SSDs). From the invention of flash memory to today’s breakthrough BiCS FLASH™ 3D technology, KIOXIA continues to pioneer cutting-edge memory solutions and services that enrich people's lives and expand society's horizons. The company's innovative 3D flash memory technology, BiCS FLASH™, is shaping the future of storage in high-density applications, including advanced smartphones, PCs, SSDs, automotive and data centers.

Job Description

The Senior Customer Program Manager (Sr. CPM) is the accountable program owner for assigned strategic customer accounts across all qualification and sustaining activities. This role maintains comprehensive ownership of the customer’s product portfolio — including legacy products in sustaining, active Pre-JQ and JQ programs, and future roadmap introductions.

The Sr. CPM serves as the primary point of contact between the customer and KIOXIA for qualification-related matters, ensuring structured planning, disciplined execution, and consistent communication throughout the product lifecycle. While CSE, JQE, and CQE teams execute technical validation and quality activities, the Sr. CPM owns program coordination, milestone control, and alignment to customer acceptance requirements.

This is a senior-level role defined by scope, complexity of account ownership, customer-facing leadership, and independent program control.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End Customer Product Portfolio Ownership

Own the complete qualification roadmap for assigned accounts, including:

• Sustaining products (past generations)
• Active Pre-JQ and JQ programs
• Future product introductions aligned to customer roadmaps
• Maintain a master, forward-looking qualification plan covering all product generations.
• Ensure continuity across firmware revisions, sustaining updates, and next-generation transitions.
• Track product lifecycle status and customer adoption progression.

Primary Qualification Interface Between Customer And KIOXIA

• Act as the single program owner for all Pre-JQ, JQ, and sustaining qualification communications.
• Lead all recurring customer program meetings related to qualification and sustaining activities.
• Establish structured agendas, document key decisions, and ensure follow-through on action items.
• Coordinate internal updates across Sales, Engineering, and CTS while maintaining ownership of qualification messaging.
• Ensure consistent, accurate, and timely communication of milestones, risks, and deliverables.

Subject Matter Expertise On Customer Product Requirements

Develop deep understanding of

• Products qualified or planned by the customer
• Customer-specific platform requirements
• Acceptance criteria and validation gates
• Firmware constraints and integration dependencies
• Serve as the internal CTS subject matter expert on customer qualification expectations.
• Validate that CSE, JQE, and CQE activities align with defined customer acceptance requirements.
• Identify and resolve requirement misalignments before they impact qualification schedules.

Qualification Planning & Execution Control

Build and maintain the master qualification schedule integrating:

• Customer timelines
• Engineering release checkpoints
• Firmware readiness gates
• Sample planning and delivery sequencing
• Identify and manage critical path dependencies.
• Coordinate Pre-JQ, JQ, and Post-Sales sample planning and tracking.
• Provide milestone forecasting and schedule confidence assessments.

Risk Management & Escalation

• Maintain a structured risk register for assigned accounts.
• Proactively identify risks related to:
• Firmware readiness
• Validation timing
• Sample availability
• Sustaining stability
• Customer schedule shifts
• Lead mitigation planning within CTS and escalate appropriately when required.
• Provide clear impact assessments tied to qualification timing and customer commitments.

Executive & Account-Level Reporting

Develop and maintain dashboards summarizing

• Qualification status across all active and sustaining products
• Milestone adherence
• Risk posture and mitigation status
• Sample readiness
• Prepare milestone reviews for CTS leadership.
• Create customer-facing milestone trackers that accurately reflect program status.

Collaboration Within CTS

The Sr. CPM integrates and aligns execution across

• Customer Support Engineers (CSE): Align technical debug, firmware updates, and readiness status with qualification milestones.
• Joint Qualification Engineers (JQE): Integrate regression testing timelines and qualification execution progress into the master schedule.
• Customer Quality Engineers (CQE): Ensure quality metrics, FA reporting inputs, and compliance documentation align with sustaining and qualification gates.
• The Sr. CPM does not perform technical validation work but ensures proper sequencing, visibility, and coordination across functions.

Qualifications

• 6–10+ years of experience in program or project management within enterprise hardware, firmware, storage, or semiconductor environments.
• Demonstrated experience managing multi-generation product portfolios within a strategic customer account.
• Proven experience serving as the primary customer-facing lead for structured technical programs.
• Strong understanding of NVMe and/or SAS product lifecycles and firmware release workflows.
• Advanced competency in schedule management, dependency tracking, and risk forecasting.
• Strong communication and presentation skills with the ability to synthesize complex technical updates into structured program reporting.
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, or related field (or equivalent experience).

Additional Information

Req#2245; ;

The expected salary for this position is $124,440.00 - $207,400.00.

At KIOXIA, we value the following

• Investment in you
• Offering opportunities for career growth and personal development training
• Open-minded management
• Empowering employees by listening and responding to ideas, issues, and approaches
• Flexible work-life balance
• Offering a generous PTO allotment, holiday shutdown, and flexible work options
• Diversity of cultures, perspectives, backgrounds and experiences of all our team members
• Through our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, our focus is to strengthen our company culture to create more inclusion and belonging for all
• Benefits for our team members
• Excellent medical and non-medical benefits, 401(k) matching, pet insurance

KIOXIA America, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.