Project Manager

The Project Manager will lead cross-functional project teams through the planning, execution, and closing of New Product Development (NPD) projects, facilitate cross-functional planning and continuous improvement events, and ensure adherence to the NPD process.

Job Responsibilities

Project Leadership: Lead between 5-12 projects of various scale & scope.

• Scope Management: Understand the project justification. Clarify project requirements & translate them into scope of work. Communicate & adhere to the established scope, mitigating scope change to limit project impact.
• Schedule Management: Facilitate creation of a cross-functional project schedule, define dependencies & manage the critical path. Communicate variances to baseline. Identify schedule improvement opportunities & drive them to realization.
• Cost Management: Compile cross-functional projects costs by gathering labor, development, and capital expense estimates. Monitor performance to baseline.
• Risk & Issue Management: Proactively identify project risks. Develop & manage mitigation plans. Escalate high impact risks appropriately & lead resolution of critical project issues to limit project impact.
• Practitioner Expertise: Demonstrate project management best practices (meeting cadences, communication, etc.) that improve team engagement & productivity through application.
• Process Expertise: Understand the NPD process & ensure projects comply through proper documentation & storage of process deliverables.
• Prioritization: Within projects, ensure tasks are sequenced based on dependencies & deadlines. Highlight priority conflicts across projects & coordinate with contributors to resolve.
• Continuous Improvement: Identify, propose, plan, & implement process updates & improvements.

Team Leadership: Build strong cross-functional teams including Product Management, Engineering, Operations, Quality, & more.

• Team Motivation & Development: Encourage collaboration & open dialogue. Coordinate recognition & team-building.
• Influence: Use data, logic, & empathy to gain buy-in. Build trust-based relationships. Navigate resistance & facilitate consensus.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Coordinate communication across functions, escalating concerns or misalignment appropriately.
• Conflict Resolution: Identify the underlying causes of conflict & facilitate open & respectful discussions, arriving at resolution through shared understanding.
• Mentorship: Offer advice & encouragement to others. Share helpful resources and lessons learned.

Communication

• Facilitation: Lead project planning events while ensuring balanced participation. Guide cross-functional teams in process improvement & mapping exercises.
• Presenting: Share project status & gate approval presentations to an executive audience, tailoring the message & reading the room for appropriate detail. Use effective visuals to support key points.
• Reporting: Provide both planned and ad hoc project updates, organizing content logically & concisely, highlighting key metrics & milestones, & ensuring consistency across formats.

Other

• May perform other duties as assigned in support of team, departmental, and organizational goals.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in a product development related discipline (Engineering, Marketing, Design); MBA preferred.

• Minimum 3-5 years of Project Management or Project Engineer experience.

• PMP Certification is desired.

• Stage-Gate / NPD / Lean Product Development Process Knowledge.

• Project Management Software Knowledge (Smartsheet or similar).