Program Manager: Connecting Engineering Students & Industry (m/f/d)

Introduction

Introduction

Help us give thousands of engineering students the experience that shaped our founder.

"At TU Berlin I had some great lectures. But it was the Formula Student team, building a race car, that showed me what engineering really feels like. The team and workshop shaped my entire future career. Without it, MotionLab.Berlin would not exist." (Fridtjof Gustavs, MD & co-founder)

That is why we run the Tech Talent Program. For 12 weeks, teams of engineering students solve real hardware and tech challenges from Deep Tech startups, SMEs and corporates. Students earn credit points and a kickstart into their careers. Companies get working prototypes and fresh eyes on problems they have been stuck on.

Europe will only build the technologies it needs if its engineers learn to build early. That is what this program is for.

You build and run this program hands-on, and you make it your own: you evolve it and turn its alumni into a talent pool that our startups and partners hire from.

About us

MotionLab.Berlin is Germany's premier Innovation Hub & Makerspace, an ecosystem for Hardtech, art, creativity, and entrepreneurship. We are an operating and founding partner of Germany's official Deep Tech Hub, with campuses in Alt-Treptow and Marzahn and we are launching Europe's largest Hardware Hub at ringberlin launching soon.

Your contact for this role is our co-founder, Fridtjof Gustavs.

Your role

• Build and run the program: You own both batches per year end to end, from the call for applications and student selection to kickoff week and graduation. You design the curriculum, coordinate the students, the technical coaches and the companies that host the challenges.
• Evolve it: You build new formats, structures and quality improvements that raise the technical output of every batch.
• Build the talent pool: You turn our graduates into an active alumni network and match them with the hiring needs of our startups and partners.
• Make our challenge hosts successful: You manage the relationships with the companies behind the challenges, from young Deep Tech startups to 100-year-old German SMEs and corporates, so that they come back for the next batch. You help our Sales team scope challenges realistically and pass on warm leads. You carry no sales quota.
• Win the universities: You are our face at technical faculties like TU Berlin, HTW and CODE, agree formal integrations such as ECTS credits, and build the relationships with professors and entrepreneurship centers that bring hundreds of strong applicants per batch.

Your Profile

• 2+ years of hands-on experience building and running programs, communities, university relations or talent acquisition. You do not just write the strategy, you run the daily operations.
• You move easily between engineering students, technical coaches, Deep Tech founders and SME or corporate executives.
• You understand that community and education programs have to pay off for the business, and you win returning customers through quality.
• You do not need to be an engineer, but you understand hardware and software workflows well enough to judge whether a challenge is feasible.
• You set the strategy for the talent pool in the morning and organise lab access or settle a team dispute in the afternoon. Both are the job.
• Fluent German and English. German is essential for our work with university faculties and traditional SMEs.

Nice to have: a network in Berlin-Brandenburg's technical universities or Deep Tech scene, and experience with B2B relationships or corporate innovation partnerships.

Your benefits

Start: 1 January 2027, full-time, on our campus in Berlin.

• Real ownership: There is no finished playbook. You write it, with short decision paths and direct work with our leadership team.
• Full access to our labs and machines, also for your own private projects.
• Personal coaching and a budget for your further training.
• Flexible hybrid work: usually 2 to 3 days per week on campus, sometimes fully remote, depending on the program phase.
• A campus full of teams building sensors, drones, robotics and climate tech, and soon ringberlin, set to become Europe's largest makerspace.
• An honest, learning-oriented culture: We celebrate wins, discuss failures openly and treat feedback as a tool.

Contact

Apply now and tell us why you are the right candidate!

More about our Tech Talent Program you will lead: https://motionlab.berlin/programs/tech-talent-program/