Strategy & Programs Manager London, United Kingdom

PhysicsX is a deep-tech company with roots in numerical physics and Formula One, dedicated to accelerating hardware innovation at the speed of software. We are building an AI-driven simulation software stack for engineering and manufacturing across advanced industries. By enabling high-fidelity, multi-physics simulation through AI inference across the entire engineering lifecycle, PhysicsX unlocks new levels of optimization and automation in design, manufacturing, and operations — empowering engineers to push the boundaries of possibility. Our customers include leading innovators in Aerospace & Defense, Materials, Energy, Semiconductors, and Automotive.

About the Team: PhysicsX is building AI that transforms how the world’s most complex engineering problems are solved. As the company scales rapidly following our Series C, we’ve built a dedicated Strategy & Programs function whose mission is to ensure we scale gracefully — with clarity, alignment, and discipline.

As a Strategy & Program Manager, you will move between strategic planning, operational efficiency, competitive intelligence, and technology enablement — sometimes in the same quarter. You’ll take on the work that sits between functions: the challenges that are strategically important but that no single team owns, and that risk falling through the cracks as we grow. This is a generalist role by design. You are not embedded in a single function — you bring fresh eyes, an unbiased perspective, and context from across the business. You need to be the person who walks into a room where the problem isn’t yet well-defined, and leaves with a plan that everyone can execute against.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead outcome-driven programs. Partner with functional leaders to own and deliver time-boxed programs that directly amplify team performance and tie back to company-wide goals — on time, within scope, and to agreed quality standards.
• Translate strategy into action. Break broad strategic objectives into measurable steps, run milestone-based plans, manage risks and issues, and lead status syncs to ensure clear execution.
• Set and maintain strategic direction. Support the company’s strategic planning process — annual strategy refreshes, quarterly business reviews, OKR cycles — and invest in the telemetry and automated metrics that give leadership a trusted, real-time view of progress.
• Surface and solve pain points. Proactively identify company and team-level challenges through stakeholder feedback, operational health metrics, and competitive intelligence, then translate those insights into structured programs.
• Drive cross-functional alignment. Foster collaboration across Delivery, Product, Research, and Operations to remove blockers and ensure the connective tissue holds as we scale.
• Communicate impact. Build trust and momentum by clearly communicating wins and progress through internal briefs, retrospective reports, and program updates.
• Close the loop. Collect feedback, quantify ROI, and ensure every program leaves behind durable improvements that outlast the program itself.

Example Programs of Work: Through focused feedback cycles and retrospectives, every quarter surfaces new programs. Recent examples include:

• Company-wide strategic planning — owning the annual strategy refresh, aligning priorities across the executive team, and translating strategy into OKRs and quarterly plans.
• Regional expansion — working with commercial leaders to assess new markets, build the business case, and design the action plan for entry.
• Supercharging productivity with AI — rolling out AI tooling to automate document prep, meeting summaries, and reporting, saving teams hours each week and enabling scale without proportional headcount growth.
• Shaping our story — preparing board and investor reports that weave performance data with a compelling growth narrative, ensuring our progress and vision land with maximum impact.

Some of our highest-impact programs touch the most sensitive and consequential decisions a scaling company makes — work that demands discretion, and where trust is earned, not assumed.

What You Bring:

• Experience: 2–4 years in strategic operations, program management, or consulting within fast-growing tech companies, consultancies, or product operations teams.
• High judgment, low ego: The discretion to be trusted with decisions that shape the company’s future, and the humility to do the unglamorous work that makes everything else possible.
• Strategic execution: Proven ability to translate high-level strategy into clear, executable plans and drive them through to completion.
• Exceptional communication: A strategy that can’t be communicated clearly isn’t a strategy. You’re comfortable leading syncs, writing concise updates, and delivering impactful presentations.
• Stakeholder management: Comfort with accountability without authority — you influence across functions without owning any of them, and adapt your message for audiences from team members to executive leadership.
• Data-driven mindset: A data-first approach, with the skills to define key metrics, build dashboards, and interpret trends to inform decisions.
• Love of learning: Willingness to dive into unfamiliar domains and build credibility quickly as a non-specialist amongst deep experts.
• Self-direction: We don’t operate with traditional line management — you thrive with freedom and know when to pull others in.
• Bias towards durable systems: You build solutions that work without you, not ones that depend on you.

Nice to Have:

• Prior experience in deep-tech, AI-enabled engineering, simulation, or scientific R&D environments.
• Experience designing change management or strategy communication frameworks.

Why Join PhysicsX?

• The team: You’ll be surrounded by incredible talent, working on some of the world’s hardest problems.
• High impact: Your work will have a measurable impact on our ability to scale and achieve our ambitious goals.
• Accelerated growth: This role gives you rare cross-functional exposure across every part of a scaling AI company — it’s one of the fastest ways to learn how an organisation is built from the inside.
• Diverse problems: Your day-to-day will change every quarter, with new challenges and new opportunities for growth.
• The culture: A culture that thrives on solving hard problems and innovating at speed.
• Competitive package: Industry-benchmarked salary + equity, private healthcare, and a dedicated budget for training, conferences, and coaching.

If you thrive in environments that value both speed and precision — and you’re the kind of person who turns strategic clarity into executed results — we’d love to meet you. Come help us scale gracefully.

What We Offer:

• Build what actually matters: Help shape an AI-native engineering company at a formative stage, tackling problems that genuinely matter for industry and society.
• Learn alongside exceptional people: Work with a high-caliber, collaborative team of engineers, scientists, and operators who care deeply about doing great work, and about helping each other get better.
• Influence over hierarchy: We operate with a flat structure: good ideas win- wherever they come from.
• Building meaningful technology is a marathon, not a sprint. We believe in balancing focused, ambitious work with a life beyond it.
• Equity options: share meaningfully in the company you’re helping to build.
• 10% employer pension contribution: because investing in future matters.
• Free office lunches: to keep you energised and focused.
• Enhanced parental leave: 3 months full pay paternity and 6 months full pay maternity leave, to provide extra flexibility during the moments that matter most.
• YellowNest nursery scheme: to help working parents manage childcare costs.
• 25 days of Annual Leave (+ Public Holidays): because taking time to rest matters.
• Private medical insurance: 100% employee cover, giving you complete peace of mind.
• Wellhub Subscription: gain access to thousands of gyms, classes and wellness apps, supporting both physical and mental wellbeing.
• Eye tests: because good work depends on good health.
• Personal development: dedicated support for learning, development, and leveling up over time.
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP): confidential wellbeing support, available whenever you need it.
• Bike2Work scheme: to make getting to work easier and greener.
• Season ticket loan: to make getting to work easier and greener.
• Octopus EV salary sacrifice: for a simpler, more sustainable way to drive electric.

We value diversity and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, sexual orientation or gender identity. We strongly encourage individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech to apply.