Valve's hiring a Supply Chain Manager. Will this help mitigate the continued shortages?

Do you have experience working in supply chain management? Valve's looking for you.

That's right. Valve's hiring. And they're not looking for game designers or programmers. They want a Supply Chain Program Manager. This is a massive deal as this job not only will help deliver new first-party Valve hardware.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of the Steam Deck. But I was also a fan of the Steam Controller and I have a Valve Index, too. Fact is, Valve's been consistent in their hardware ambitions and the fact they're ramping up their production by hiring a dedicated Supply Chain Program Manager means that we could be seeing the oft-rumored standalone Deckard VR headset. But if they're filling full-time position like this, they likely have other nascent hardware projects in the works.

But what actually is a Supply Chain Program Manager? Well, according to the job listing:

Work with the hardware and software product teams to design, develop, execute, and manufacture projects and programs in consumer electronics impacting business and customer experience.  Develop and execute business strategies and decisions for product development, component sourcing, partner relations, and manufacturing based on detailed data and cost/benefit analysis of related financial and business data. Manage projects and programs from planning to completion by collaborating with engineering to define functional and technical requirements, specifications, and solutions, and work with external supply chain partners for solutions. Responsible for overall sourcing strategy, supply chain operations, and driving resolution of continuity of supply and capacity issues.

And as far as minimum requirements to be considered for the job:

• 5 years of experience using tools including PowerBI, Tableau, Arena BOM management (or other BOM Management tools), and MS Office
• 2 years of experience in managing, analyzing, and reporting business metrics
• 2 years of experience in capacity planning and forecasting
• 2 years of experience in product launch management and program management
• 2 years of experience in managing external partners and vendor relationships
• 1 year of experience in contract management and negotiations
• 1 year of experience using QuickBooks (or similar accounting software) and Steam VR stats (or similar statistical tools)

And as Twitter user @SadlyItsBradly points out, this is the second job posting from Valve in the last week in this same vein.

It looks like Valve is serious about continuing to develop hardware. And while I'm excited to see what that means, I can only hope we'll see a Steam Controller 2.