About Common Mission Project (CMP)
The Common Mission Project (CMP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that builds the education and innovation infrastructure for the country's most consequential national interest work. Through flagship programs spanning national security (Hacking for Defense), diplomacy, maritime, and emerging civic and STEM initiatives, CMP equips student teams, educators, and university partners to take on hard problems and build the ventures, methodologies, and solutions that move them forward.
CMP delivers the methodology, educator certification, and diligence infrastructure that turn student inquiry into validated discovery, and emerging founders into the next generation of national interest entrepreneurs. CMP trains and certifies educators across 80+ universities, runs a multi-phase Innovation Fund that has deployed over $1M to student teams advancing prototypes against national interest problems, and produces senior convenings like Red Queen and the NSIE Summit that bring together military, academic, government, and venture leaders. CMP is funded through federal contracts and a diversifying base of foundation grants, philanthropy, and research partnerships, positioning the organization for the next phase of growth as a research-translation and entrepreneurship-education partner to universities, federal agencies, and the broader innovation ecosystem.
Position Summary
The Program Manager owns the running of programs including Hacking for Defense, CMP's flagship program, end to end. This is an operations-first role: you carry the operational backbone of a national program portfolio, including weekly and monthly contract tracker reporting, management of the relationship with the prime contractor on a vehicle, and the educator support that keeps every school in the network prepared, resourced, and delivering. You keep programs running on cadence, on contract, and fully supported, so the program operates as a managed function rather than depending on senior leadership to hold the pieces together.
This is not a generic program operations job, and it is not a role run from behind a tracker. The right candidate brings real programmatic depth: you deeply understand experiential entrepreneurship curriculum, or at minimum you have delivered university or high school entrepreneurship programs built on the Lean methodology, and you have managed a deliberate volume of programming at scale. This is a people-dependent, user-dependent role: educators and students are the users, and the role works with them directly, every week. You can hold the operational machine and speak the pedagogical language, because you have run this kind of methodology-driven education yourself, with the people in the room.
This Role is For You If…
- You are an operator first: trackers, cadences, reporting, and follow-through are how you create order.
- You have delivered entrepreneurship or Lean-methodology programs yourself, at the university or high school level, and you know what educators actually need to teach them well.
- You have run a real volume of programming: multiple cohorts, multiple sites, or multiple semesters at once.
- You are comfortable managing a partner relationship inside a federal contract structure.
- You measure your success by whether the program runs without escalation.
Key Responsibilities
Program Operations & Contract Reporting
- Program Cadence: Own program operational cadence across the university network: semester cycles, delivery milestones, and the tracking systems that show program health at a glance.
- Contract Tracker Reporting: Produce weekly and monthly contract tracker reporting against the contract vehicle, keeping delivery visible, current, and audit-ready.
- Prime Contractor Relationship: Manage the working relationship with the prime contractor on the vehicle: coordination, deliverable alignment, and clean information flow in both directions.
Educator Support & Professional Development
- Educator Enablement: Ensure educators across the network have everything they need for delivery: onboarding and preparation packages, readiness assessment, materials, and answers when they need them.
- Professional Development: Run the professional development rhythm for the educator network, in partnership with the Director of Education and Training and the Education Project Manager, including support for the tiered educator training structure and the Educator Forum.
- Educator Readiness & Impact: Apply and maintain educator readiness assessment outputs and the educator impact metrics framework so the network's teaching quality is visible and improving.
Program Quality & Fidelity
- Fidelity Management: Keep programs delivered with fidelity across the network: the methodology taught as designed, the course infrastructure current, and gaps surfaced to the curriculum owners for fixes.
- Curriculum Loop: Coordinate with the Center for Education & Research so curriculum improvements flow into delivery and field lessons flow back.
Cross-Program Coordination
- Center Coordination: Work inside the Center for Programs & Network operating rhythm, keeping status current on the dashboard and coordinating with the Events & Partnerships and student ecosystem functions where H4D touches them.
First 90-Day Success Milestone Examples
Days 1-30: Take the Controls
Establish operational command of H4D: current universities, educators, semester calendar, contract deliverables, and reporting obligations. Stand up or take over the weekly and monthly contract tracker reporting. Establish the working relationship with the prime contractor counterparts and the internal team. Deliver a written program operations assessment to the General Manager of Programs covering delivery health, reporting gaps, and educator support needs.
Days 31-60: Run It on Cadence
Run the full program rhythm without escalation: reporting shipping on schedule, educator requests handled inside defined turnaround times, and the prime contractor relationship operating through your seat. Deliver the current-semester educator support package: onboarding, preparation, and readiness materials in educators' hands.
Days 61-90: Make It Better
Demonstrate at least one systemic improvement in production: a reporting automation, a support workflow, or a readiness process that reduces manual load. Deliver the first educator impact snapshot using the readiness and impact frameworks. Present the next-semester operations plan to the General Manager of Programs with risks and resourcing identified.
Qualifications
- Operations Depth: 5+ years of program management or program operations experience, with direct responsibility for delivery cadence, reporting, and partner coordination.
- Programmatic Depth: Direct experience delivering university or high school entrepreneurship programs and the Lean methodology, or deep working knowledge of experiential entrepreneurship curriculum. University-environment delivery is the minimum.
- Direct User Contact: A record of working directly with the people in your programs: educators, students, and practitioners, face to face and week to week. Program administration without direct user contact is not a substitute.
- Volume at Scale: Demonstrated management of a deliberate volume of programming: multiple cohorts, sites, and concurrent cycles.
- Contract Fluency: Experience with federal contract reporting or working inside federally funded programs, including partner or subcontract relationships.
- Systems Discipline: Strong systems habits: trackers, dashboards, documentation, and processes that other people can follow.
- Communication: Clear, professional communication with educators, partners, and program leadership.
- Availability & Communication Standard: This role requires full engagement during core business hours, Eastern time, and proactive communication as the operating norm.
Bachelor's degree required.
Due to the nature of our work, U.S. citizenship is required for this position.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary Range: $85,000 to $110,000 annually, commensurate with experience
Benefits: Health insurance, retirement plan, PTO, professional development budget
Location: Remote, with travel for educator events and team gatherings
Why Join CMP?
CMP sits at the front edge of national interest innovation in the United States. Innovation in this space typically takes a decade or more from research to fielded impact. CMP's methodology and educator network compress that timeline dramatically, taking student teams from classroom inquiry to validated solutions, working prototypes, and operational adoption within a single academic year, sometimes one semester.
As Program Manager, you will run the flagship that started it all. Hacking for Defense is taught across 80+ universities and has trained more than 8,000 students whose teams have gone on to hold government contracts and field deployed technology. You will be the person who keeps that national program running on cadence, keeps its educators equipped, and makes it operationally excellent. This role is for an operator who also knows the classroom, and wants to run a program that matters at national scale.