Technical Program Management · Summer 2025
Lightmatter.
Technical Program Management Intern at Lightmatter.
Technical PM intern at a $4.4B AI photonic computing unicorn. Defining product lifecycle milestones, authoring validation criteria, and building documentation systems for a 300-person engineering org shipping AI data center hardware.
Technical Program Management Intern · Mountain View, CA · Summer 2025
the company
What Lightmatter builds.
Lightmatter builds photonic interconnect hardware that moves data between AI chips using light instead of copper. At a $4.4B valuation and ~300 people, the company was at the inflection point between startup speed and enterprise rigor, scaling programs and processes without losing the ability to ship.
The TPM role sat at that intersection: owning cross-functional alignment across engineering, hardware, and product teams simultaneously building toward large-scale data center deployment.
task 01 · product lifecycle
Defining product lifecycle milestones.
The core project was creating a program playbook: a structured framework for how programs start, run, and close at Lightmatter. This required interviewing team leads across engineering and product to understand what milestones actually mattered, where handoffs broke down, and what information program managers needed at each stage but were not getting.
The output: 55+ product lifecycle milestones defined across the full org, covering PRD commitment, gap and risk analysis, and budget allocation. The milestone structure was designed to work across both hardware and software teams, which operate on fundamentally different timelines and iterate differently.
Hardware locks decisions early. Software ships continuously. The playbook had to accommodate both without creating a process so rigid it slowed either down.
55+
lifecycle milestones defined
~300
person org aligned
2 tracks
hardware and software timelines reconciled
task 02 · engineering validation
Authoring engineering validation criteria.
Authored 40+ validation criteria for engineering and production tests across Lightmatter's hardware systems. Each criterion mapped to a market standard, with FIT (Failure in Time) evaluations calculated to verify reliability thresholds required for large-scale AI data center deployment.
The validation framework gave engineering teams a clear pass/fail definition for each test, removing ambiguity that had previously stalled sign-off and delayed deployment timelines.
40+
validation criteria authored
FIT
evaluations against market standards
Unblocked
large-scale AI data center deployment
task 03 · documentation pipeline
Building a documentation pipeline.
Program and product managers at Lightmatter maintained documentation manually, a process that introduced version drift, inconsistency, and significant update overhead across 30+ PMs. The solution was to treat documentation like code: a CI/CD pipeline built via GitHub Actions that automated documentation generation, validation, and publishing on every commit.
The pipeline reduced update cycle time by 65%. Credentials were secured via GitHub Secrets. Test suites that previously took 8 minutes to run were refactored to complete in 3 minutes, reducing iteration friction for the full PM team.
Documentation architecture
Production Docs
Static, signed-off, milestone-linked. The authoritative record that follows each program through its full lifecycle.
Working Docs
Dynamic, linked to live Google Drives, organized by functional area. Landing pages designed to be non-prescriptive. Teams adopt the structure at their own pace.
65%
reduction in update cycle time
8→3 min
test suite runtime
30+
program and product managers served
internship goals
30-60-90 goals.
The internship was structured around three pillars. Ownership: building something real, not shadowing. Technical fluency: learning to speak the language of hardware and software engineering teams well enough to be genuinely useful, not just present. Iteration and influence: learning to form opinionated conclusions from incomplete information, identify bottlenecks, and communicate findings to people at every level of the org.
The playbook, validation criteria, and CI/CD pipeline were each outputs of those three goals running in parallel.
Ownership
Building something real: three shipped deliverables with measurable org impact, not shadow work.
Technical Fluency
Learning to speak hardware and software engineering well enough to be useful to both, not just present in the room.
Cross-Functional Influence
Forming opinionated conclusions from incomplete information and communicating findings across every level of the org.
result
What the summer was.
Lightmatter was at the exact moment where process starts to matter: large enough that ad hoc coordination breaks down, small enough that the right system could still be designed from scratch. The summer was spent building those systems: for milestones, for validation, and for documentation. Each one designed to scale with the org rather than constrain it.
"Katherine is a self-starter who came onboard with a strong desire to influence the way we manage programs. By the end of the internship, she had aligned our team and engineering stakeholders on the list of reference milestones for future programs at Lightmatter. Her ability to ask insightful questions and engage in meaningful conversations makes her a fantastic team member. She takes ownership of her work, consistently delivers high-quality results, and isn't afraid to seek out new challenges."
Eric Chin
Technical Program Manager, OpenAI · formerly Lightmatter
Managed Katherine directly · September 2025
"Katherine proved to be an invaluable intern with Lightmatter's TPM team, quickly making a significant impact by streamlining our product lifecycle. Her strong eagerness to learn and high level of drive were consistently evident. I was particularly impressed by her deliberate approach to career development. Katherine's proactive nature and effortless ability to connect with people allowed her to efficiently advance her work. Any team would be fortunate to have her leading their programs."
Meg O'Brien
Director of Foundry & Test Engineering, Lightmatter
Managed Katherine directly · October 2025
