Controls Engineer Project Manager Jobs in South Dakota

About the Role

We're looking for an Engineering Project Manager who thrives in complex product development environments where software, electrical, mechanical, aerospace, systems, manufacturing, and test engineering all come together to deliver innovative products.

This is not a traditional project coordinator role. Success in this position requires enough technical depth to understand engineering tradeoffs, ask the right questions, recognize emerging risks, and help multidisciplinary teams make informed decisions. You'll partner closely with engineering leadership, technical leads, product management, manufacturing, quality, and operations to keep programs moving from concept through production.

The ideal candidate is comfortable discussing architecture with software engineers in one meeting, integration plans with systems engineers in the next, manufacturing readiness later that afternoon, and customer commitments with product management before the day is over.

What You'll Do

• Lead execution of complex, cross-functional engineering programs from concept through production.
• Build and maintain integrated project plans across software, electrical, mechanical, aerospace, systems, test, manufacturing, and supply chain teams.
• Drive day-to-day program execution by identifying dependencies, resolving blockers, and ensuring teams remain aligned on priorities.
• Work closely with engineering leads to understand technical progress rather than relying solely on schedule updates.
• Identify technical, schedule, resource, and cost risks early, facilitate mitigation planning, and communicate impacts clearly.
• Facilitate engineering reviews, technical decision meetings, and cross-functional planning sessions.
• Help teams decompose large initiatives into achievable milestones while maintaining focus on overall product objectives.
• Monitor project health using meaningful engineering metrics rather than simply tracking task completion.
• Coordinate with Product Management to translate product priorities into executable engineering plans.
• Partner with Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, and Operations to ensure products transition successfully into production.
• Communicate program status, risks, and tradeoffs to engineering leadership and executive stakeholders.
• Continuously improve planning, estimation, and execution processes across the engineering organization.

What Makes Someone Successful

The strongest candidates naturally become part of the engineering conversation.

They ask insightful questions because they understand how engineering organizations work. They recognize when a software dependency could impact hardware integration, understand why requirements changes affect verification effort, appreciate the realities of manufacturing and supply chain, and know when technical uncertainty makes a schedule overly optimistic.

Rather than simply collecting status updates, they help engineering teams solve problems.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or another technical discipline.
• 2+ years leading complex engineering or technical product development programs.
• Experience managing multidisciplinary hardware and software development efforts.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with software, electrical, mechanical, systems, test, manufacturing, and product management teams.
• Strong understanding of engineering development lifecycles, systems engineering, verification and validation, integration, and production readiness.
• Experience building integrated schedules, identifying critical paths, and managing cross-functional dependencies.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with both technical and executive audiences.
• Strong facilitation, organization, and decision-making skills.

Preferred

• Engineering background with prior hands-on technical experience.
• Experience delivering embedded systems, aerospace, defense, or other complex physical products.
• Familiarity with software development and product development methodologies.
• Experience supporting technical design reviews such as SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, or equivalent engineering milestones.
• Experience with project management tools such as Jira, or similar platforms.

What We Value

We value project managers who earn credibility with engineers through curiosity, preparation, and sound judgment.

You should be technically fluent enough to recognize when plans are unrealistic, ask challenging questions, understand the implications of engineering decisions, and help the organization execute with confidence.

If your idea of project management is collecting status updates and updating spreadsheets, this role probably isn't the right fit.

If your idea of project management is bringing together experts across multiple disciplines to solve difficult engineering problems and deliver exceptional products, we'd love to talk with you.

Benefits: TCOM offers a variety of benefits, including health and disability insurance, 401(k) match, flexible spending accounts/HSAs, EAP, tuition reimbursement, parental leave, paid time off (PTO), and company-paid holidays. Programs and eligibility may vary based on hire date, classification, and schedule.