Technical Project Manager, Product Engineering
Summary
Technical Project Manager at Meissner (biotech/pharma manufacturing equipment) who owns on-time, high-quality delivery of product development and customer projects: charters, planning, schedule/cost/scope control, risk and stakeholder management, and reporting. On-site in Camarillo, CA; needs 5+ years technical project delivery and fluency with engineering specs and tools like MS Project/ClickUp.
We're building equipment that impacts patient outcomes. As our Technical Project Manager, you'll own critical delivery timelines across engineering teams in a fast-moving biotech environment. If you thrive managing complexity and shipping quality on time, let's talk.
Who is Meissner?
The goal at Meissner is to be more than simply good; it is to be extraordinary. Extraordinary performance comes from extraordinary people.
Meissner as a group is passionate about helping our clients manufacture lifesaving and life enhancing drugs, therapies, and vaccines. We develop, manufacture, supply and service advanced microfiltration products and single-use systems worldwide.
We know that when you are passionate about what you do, it’s more than just a job.
Meissner is focused on the development of the whole individual, and we have programs and tools in place to help us stay at our best mentally and physically. In alignment with our commitment to support the growth and development of the whole individual, Meissner has inaugurated a Learning and Development department to solely focus on cultivating our team. When you grow, we grow.
How you will make an impact:
As a Technical Project Manager for Product Engineering, you will drive and deliver on-time, high-quality delivery on product development and customer projects supporting biopharmaceutical manufacturing equipment and internal initiatives, in a high-velocity, cross-functional environment. You will shape charters and plans alongside the project team, enforce accountability, manage schedule, cost, and scope change as projects evolve and keep stakeholders informed. You will tailor the project management approach to the project and stakeholders to keep overhead lean but the approach robust, while enshrining a high-ownership system. Success in this role requires a nimble and a customer-centric approach; advanced communication skills and technical fluency; and the initiative to bring high-quality projects to completion at speed.
- Synthesize stakeholder input into a project charter that establishes purpose, deliverables, and scope, equipping leadership to secure organizational buy-in.
- Identify project stakeholders and affected departments. Manage their expectations throughout the project, aligning them on scope, priorities, and timing as the project evolves. Address misalignment as soon as it appears and resolve cross-functional obstacles that hold up delivery.
- Facilitate and synthesize a coherent project plan with the project team, applying a level of planning rigor appropriate to the project's complexity, risk, and stakeholders. Capture the necessary requirements, deliverables, schedule, risks, and resource needs to support successful execution.
- Build and maintain a project management system that drives ownership through transparency; making commitments, progress, dependencies, and risks visible and self-reportable so that teams proactively manage issues early.
- Communicate priorities, decisions, and status clearly within the project team, facilitate the discussions and reviews that keep work moving, and ensure the team has the information it needs to act.
- Track issues and challenges across active projects. Ensure that emergent issues are triaged and prioritized by impact, resolution ownership is clear, and appropriate issues are escalated rapidly.
- Provide reliable visibility into progress, dependencies, and forecasted delivery.
- Track project cost against budget, and flag variances as they develop.
- Foster proactive risk management by encouraging early identification of uncertainties and commensurate mitigation efforts based on likelihood and impact.
- Control changes to scope, budget, and timeline, ensuring each is assessed for impact and appropriately approved before it alters a project's baseline.
- Identify and resolve resource and capacity conflicts across the project portfolio, surfacing trade-offs early enough for leadership to act on them.
- Own project reporting and status communication, including dashboards, ad hoc updates, and presentations to departmental and organizational leadership, giving stakeholders current visibility into project health.
- Define and maintain the metrics that measure delivery performance, including schedule adherence, estimate accuracy, and cycle time. Report against them to drive improvement feedback loops.
- Plan and manage projects in alignment with the quality and regulatory requirements governing Meissner products, accounting for the validation, qualification, and documentation activities they require, including FAT, SAT, IQ/OQ/PQ, and GAMP 5 where applicable.
- Evolve the department's project management practice by designing preventative processes, adopting high-impact tools, retiring low-value practices, and mentoring the team on lean delivery, communication, and prioritization. Apply working knowledge of Meissner's products, platforms, and the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry to plan realistically, anticipate risk, and engage credibly with engineers, customers, and cross-functional partners.
- Evaluate and adopt emerging project management tools and AI-based approaches that accelerate planning, reporting, and risk management, applying sound judgment on where they genuinely add value.
- Capture lessons learned throughout the project and at closing, so that the team can leverage them on future work.
- Drive project closeout to completion, confirming the project delivered its intended scope, documentation is captured in the correct locations and states, information and deliverables have been transferred, resources are released, and open items are resolved.
- Travel may be required for up to 10% of the time, both domestically and internationally.
This is an on-site role based out of our headquarters in Camarillo, CA.
The skills and experience you’ll need:
- Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline such as Mechanical, Electrical, Manufacturing, or Biomedical Engineering. A related technical degree paired with hardware project delivery experience will be considered.
- 5+ years of experience in project delivery within an engineering, manufacturing, or other technical, regulated industry environment.
- Has delivered hardware or consumable projects through a full development and qualification cycle, including design, build, test, and launch.
- Experience in the pharmaceutical or biotech industry is preferred.
- PMP, CAPM, or an equivalent project management certification is preferred but not required.
- Proficient with MS Office software including Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and with project management software such as Microsoft Project or ClickUp. Experience building and maintaining project dashboards is preferred.
- The ability to read and interpret engineering specifications, drawings, and test protocols is required. Must be able to hold substantive technical conversations with engineers without translation.
- Demonstrated ability to facilitate input from multiple stakeholders and synthesize it into a clear, actionable plan.
- Ability to hold cross-functional teams accountable to their commitments and drive ambiguous or contested decisions toward resolution.
- Experience applying AI-based and other emerging tools to improve planning, reporting, or risk management, with sound judgment on appropriate use is preferred.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to lead cross-functional discussions and convey project status, risk, and decisions credibly to engineering leadership, customers, and cross-functional partners.
- Customer-centric, nimble, and driven to tackle high-leverage work directly. Challenges the status quo, prioritizes team ownership and autonomy over direct control, and adapts approach and tooling to each project, team, and stakeholder.
Don’t meet every single requirement? Apply anyway.
What we can offer you:
- Full Medical, Dental and Vision coverage with HSA Employer Contributions for eligible plans
- Additional Perks- HQ Onsite Full Gym, Ultramodern Coffee Bars, Free EV Charging Stations, Employee Discounts
- 401k, Profit Sharing, 401k Advisory Services
- Employee Assistance Program
- Paid Time Off, Paid Holidays, Anniversary Holiday
Ready to make an impact? Let’s talk.
This position may require you to access information that is subject to U.S. export regulations. You may only access such information if you are a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. government.
Meissner is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.
US BASE PAY SCALE $109,400 - 145,100
The base pay scale for this role is what Meissner reasonably expects to pay for the position although actual pay may vary from this scale depending on an applicant's experience.