Manager, Product Lifecycle Operations

About the role

Since 1953, Ferguson has been a source of quality supplies for a variety of industries. Together We Build Better infrastructure, better homes and better businesses. We exist to make our customers’ complex projects simple, successful, and sustainable. We proactively solve problems, adapt and grow to continuously serve our customers, communities and each other. Ferguson, a Fortune 500 company, is proud to provide best-in-class products, service and capabilities across the following industries: Commercial/Mechanical, Facilities Supply, Fire and Fabrication, HVAC, Industrial, Residential Trade, Residential Building and Remodel, Waterworks and Residential Digital Commerce. Ferguson has approximately 36,000 associates across 1,700 locations. Ferguson is a community of proud associates who operate with the shared purpose of building something meaningful. You will build a career that you are proud of, at a company you can believe in.

Location: This is approved to be Remote or will be hybrid if you are located close to one of Ferguson HQ locations, per Company Policy.

Responsibilities

• Stage Gate Governance Across Own Brand: Own, govern, and continuously improve the Stage Gate process for product development across all 21 Own Brand brands. Drive consistent adoption of common Stage Gate standards, required stages, workflows, roles, responsibilities, approvals, and documentation across brands and teams. Partner directly with Own Brand companies that are not currently using Hive to transition their product development work into the platform. Work with each brand to design a practical workflow that supports its business needs while meeting corporate process, governance, and reporting requirements. Lead training, user acceptance, adoption, and ongoing adherence activities to help each brand successfully implement and sustain the Stage Gate process in Hive. Maintain process documentation, templates, user guidance, and governance standards to support consistent execution across all brands.
• Product Development & Launch Process Excellence: Own and improve the end-to-end product development and launch process, from concept through launch and lifecycle transition. Define clear process steps, ownership, required inputs, data points, dependencies, handoffs, and timing expectations across participating departments. Identify and remove bottlenecks, duplicate work, communication gaps, and inconsistent practices that affect launch timeliness and preparedness. Ensure teams understand the work required for each project, when it is due, and the information needed to complete it. Improve cross-functional communication and awareness of project status, launch milestones, open requirements, risks, and next steps. Partner with functional leaders to resolve process barriers and implement sustainable improvements.
• PLM Implementation & Ongoing Business Ownership: Lead the end-to-end implementation, launch, adoption, and ongoing business ownership of a new Product Lifecycle Management system. Serve as the business lead and primary partner to the selected third-party PLM vendor, IT, implementation partners, and project management resources. Define future-state processes, workflows, governance, user roles, required data points, data ownership, business rules, integrations, and system requirements. Engage interested parties across Product Development, Global Sourcing, Supply Chain, Product Data, Product Assurance, International Logistics, Marketing, Finance, Sales Operations, IT, and other functions to capture end-to-end requirements and drive the project to completion. Coordinate process validation, data preparation, user acceptance testing, training, communications, deployment, and business readiness. After launch, own platform governance, process alignment, user adoption, business support, and the prioritization of feedback, change requests, and enhancements. Partner with IT and the vendor on administration, integrations, releases, support, and continued improvement