Engineering Project Manager, Maneva, IL, US

About Maneva

Maneva, a startup founded by an ex-Google Deepmind researcher, is an AI service provider revolutionizing manufacturing operations with cutting-edge AI solutions for autonomous factory operation and optimization. Our solution generates AI-powered actions and insights using off-the-shelf hardware or existing vision systems for real-impact manufacturing problems in products and equipment inspection, production efficiency, safety, and more.

What You'll Do

As an Engineering Project Manager at Maneva, you'll be the strategic orchestrator ensuring optimal utilization of our engineering resources across multiple concurrent AI vision system deployments. You will drive engineering prioritization, manage project timelines, and serve as the critical bridge between our technical teams and customer success organization. Your deep understanding of industrial engineering and machine vision systems will enable you to make informed resource allocation decisions while maintaining technical credibility with both internal teams and external customers.

This role is central to scaling our operations efficiently, ensuring our engineering talent is optimally deployed across high-impact customer projects while maintaining delivery excellence and customer satisfaction.

Location: Remote-first with occasional travel for strategic customer meetings

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Resource Management & Prioritization

• Optimize engineering resource allocation across multiple concurrent customer projects, balancing team capacity, skill sets, and project priorities
• Develop and maintain engineering capacity planning models to forecast resource needs and identify potential bottlenecks across the project portfolio
• Lead weekly engineering resource allocation meetings with technical leads to review project status, adjust priorities, and resolve resource conflicts
• Create and manage engineering project roadmaps with clear dependency mapping, critical path analysis, and resource requirements
• Implement resource utilization tracking and metrics to continuously improve team efficiency and project delivery performance
• Coordinate cross-functional engineering teams including vision engineers, software developers, hardware specialists, and field technicians

Project Timeline & Milestone Management

• Establish realistic project timelines based on technical complexity, resource availability, and customer requirements
• Monitor and track project milestones across all active deployments, proactively identifying and mitigating schedule risks
• Facilitate project planning sessions with engineering teams to break down complex deployments into manageable work packages
• Manage project interdependencies and coordinate sequencing across multiple customer implementations
• Conduct regular project health assessments and implement corrective actions to keep projects on track
• Maintain project documentation including scope changes, timeline adjustments, and lessons learned

Customer Success & Communication Interface

• Partner closely with Customer Success team to translate technical project status into clear customer communications
• Provide technical expertise for customer discussions around timeline expectations, milestone definitions, and project scope
• Participate in customer calls to discuss project progress, address technical concerns, and manage expectation alignment
• Prepare executive-level project dashboards showing portfolio health, resource utilization, and delivery forecasts
• Escalate and resolve project issues that impact customer satisfaction or delivery commitments
• Support pre-sales technical discussions by providing realistic delivery timeline estimates and resource requirements

Process Optimization & Strategic Planning

• Develop and refine project management processes specifically tailored for AI vision system deployments
• Analyze project data to identify patterns, bottlenecks, and opportunities for process improvement
• Lead retrospectives and post-project reviews to capture learnings and optimize future project execution
• Build forecasting models for engineering capacity planning and project pipeline management
• Collaborate with leadership on strategic resource planning and team scaling decisions