Customer Account Program Manager
Position Summary
The Customer Account Program Manager is an experienced professional role that owns execution for assigned commercial and defense aerospace customer programs, from contract award through delivery and post-delivery support. This role serves as the primary customer-facing point of contact and drives internal alignment across engineering, planning, supply chain, production, quality, logistics, and finance to meet contractual requirements in a highly regulated environment. Programs may include both build-to-print and engineered-to-order (ETO) work, requiring strong adherence to change control, documentation discipline, and proactive risk management.
Key Responsibilities
- Serve as the primary customer interface for assigned accounts and programs, including major prime contractors, managing communications, expectations, and escalations from solicitation through contract execution.
- Own program execution against contract requirements, including scope, schedule, cost, quality, and delivery, for build-to-print and ETO programs.
- Lead cross-functional program cadence, including weekly status meetings, risk reviews, and recovery plans, with engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, quality, planning, and logistics.
- Drive translation of customer requirements and flow-downs into internal deliverables, ensuring configuration control, documentation, and change management are followed, and customer deliverables are met.
- Manage engineering changes and customer-driven changes by coordinating impact assessments for cost, lead time, and quality, driving internal approvals, and communicating updates to customers, while working with customers to ensure continued scope and contract value alignment.
- Coordinate customer forecasts, demand changes, and order priorities, aligning capacity and material availability with planning and supply chain.
- Track and report program health using program KPIs and customer scorecards as applicable, such as on-time delivery, past due, schedule adherence, shortages, non-conformance reports and quality escapes, returns, and customer portal-driven metrics.
- Coordinate contract deliverables and required documentation as applicable, such as certificates of conformance, first article inspection, traceability and lot records, material certificates, special process certificates, and packaging and labeling requirements.
- Cleanly and completely enter all sales order data into IndustriOS (ERP system) within 24 hours of contract or purchase order acceptance, including pricing, lead times, incoterms, packaging, shipping, labeling, and special requirements.
- Lead cross-functional contract kick-off discussions to ensure a “start green, stay green” mentality.
- Drive risk identification and mitigation for supply constraints, long-lead material, special process capacity, quality issues, engineering changes, and test or inspection constraints, and maintain recovery plans.
- Identify programmatic or delivery risks to the customer early, manage performance to recovery plans, and provide frequent updates to the customer.
- Partner with Quality to ensure timely containment, root cause analysis, and corrective actions (8D/SCAR), and to prevent recurrence of any quality escapes.
- Coordinate customer visits, audits, and business reviews, including preparing data, ensuring action-item closure, and communicating outcomes.
- Lead creation of monthly forecast, based on customers’ priorities
- Collaborate with Finance on billing milestones, credits and debits, dispute resolution, and inventory carrying costs, ensuring program financial health is visible and managed.
Qualifications, Education, and Certifications
- Bachelor’s degree in business, Engineering, or a related field with 5+ years of relevant program management experience required.
- Candidates without a bachelor’s degree must have 10+ years of relevant program management experience.
- Project Management Professional (PMP) certification preferred.
Required Skills
- Demonstrated experience supporting cross-functional execution across production, supply chain, engineering, and quality.
- Working knowledge of schedule management, customer communication, and escalation handling.
- Confident, professional communication with customers, especially during escalations.
- Experience with ERP systems, with IndustriOS experience preferred.
- Strong organization and follow-through while managing multiple programs at once.
Desired Skills
- Understanding of customer contract flow-downs, including DFARS and FAR clauses, from major aerospace and defense prime contractors.
- Knowledge of ITAR and export control requirements for handling defense-related technical data and hardware.
- Experience operating within customer supplier portals, such as Exostar, Ariba, and prime contractor specific portals (HASP, Sell2Bell, for purchase orders, scorecards, and supplier communications.
- Advanced Microsoft Excel skills for forecasting, tracking, and reporting.
- Ability to interpret contracts, purchase order terms and conditions, and pricing.
- Strong negotiation skills for managing schedule changes, pricing changes, and customer disputes.
- Experience managing both build-to-print and engineered-to-order programs.
- Proven ability to develop and lead delivery recovery plans.
- Ability to lead cross-functional teams and drive accountability without direct authority.
