Director, Project Management

BLUSA Defense Manufacturing is excited to announce an opportunity for an accomplished Director of Project Management to join our team and play a key role in driving the successful delivery of our most important initiatives. This is more than a project management position, it's an opportunity to build, lead, and elevate a high-performing project management function while partnering with talented teams across the Company.

Job Summary

The Director of Project Management provides strategic leadership for the company’s project management function, ensuring projects are consistently delivered on time, within budget, and in alignment with customer specifications, product requirements, quality standards, and profitability goals. This role oversees project managers and cross-functional project activity from order handoff through delivery, establishing disciplined processes, clear accountability, and effective communication across Sales, Engineering, Purchasing, Manufacturing, Quality, Customer Service, and Shipping/Receiving.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on leader who can balance customer satisfaction, operational capacity, cost control, and continuous improvement. The Director of Project Management is responsible for strengthening project execution, managing portfolio-level risks and priorities, developing the project management team, and providing leadership with accurate visibility into delivery performance, financial results, and resource requirements.

Key Responsibilities

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily:

• Lead, mentor, and develop the Project Management team; establish performance expectations, provide coaching, and support professional development.
• Oversee the full project portfolio to ensure projects are executed according to approved schedules, budgets, customer commitments, quality requirements, and margin targets.
• Establish and maintain standardized project-management processes, tools, reporting methods, work instructions, and controls across the organization.
• Serve as the senior escalation point for significant schedule, cost, quality, scope, material availability, capacity, or customer-service issues.
• Partner with Sales, Engineering, Purchasing, Manufacturing, Quality, Customer Service, Finance, and Shipping/Receiving to ensure effective project handoffs, alignment on priorities, and timely issue resolution.
• Review project status, production constraints, material availability, customer commitments, and financial performance; prioritize resources and corrective actions as needed.
• Ensure Work Orders, project documentation, job packets, procurement requirements, outside-service requests, and customer-specific requirements are complete, accurate, and effectively managed within the ERP system.
• Monitor project costs, change orders, purchasing activity, outside processing, labor requirements, and job profitability; identify risks to margin and implement recovery plans.
• Lead regular project and production review meetings, providing concise updates on key milestones, risks, recovery actions, capacity needs, and customer-impacting concerns.
• Develop and maintain portfolio-level dashboards and key performance indicators, including on-time delivery, project margin, schedule adherence, backlog health, change-order performance, and customer satisfaction.
• Collaborate with senior leadership on forecasting, resource planning, staffing requirements, capital needs, and operational priorities.
• Drive continuous-improvement initiatives that reduce lead times, improve project visibility, strengthen cross-functional accountability, and enhance customer experience.
• Support customer communications for high-value, complex, or at-risk projects; help resolve escalated concerns while protecting long-term customer relationships.
• Ensure project-management practices comply with company policies, customer requirements, applicable quality systems, and regulatory requirements.