Project Manager – New Product Development, Cold Plate Business

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional projects for new cold plate product development, engineered-to-order customer solutions, product customization, and product transfers into manufacturing.
• Manage projects in accordance with the corporate NPDI / New Product Development and Introduction process.
• Develop, maintain, and execute project plans, including timelines, milestones, deliverables, resource plans, budgets, risk registers, and dependency tracking.
• Own project scope, schedule, budget, risk management, escalation, and overall execution performance.
• Cook up cross-functional teams including engineering, product management, manufacturing engineering, operations, procurement, quality, logistics, service, marketing, sales, and order fulfillment.
• Work with functional leaders globally to identify and secure the resources required to adequately staff projects.
• Ensure project execution remains aligned with the manufacturing strategy, production capabilities, and launch readiness.
• Drive alignment between project scope, business strategy, customer requirements, product roadmap priorities, technical feasibility, and manufacturing capability.
• Collaborate closely with Product Management to define product requirements, specifications, customer needs, business cases, and launch priorities.
• Work closely with Engineering to support design, development, validation, and release of cold plate solutions that meet performance, reliability, quality, and cost targets.
• Support key development activities including design reviews, prototype builds, thermal and mechanical validation, design verification, product qualification, and production readiness.
• Drive product cost, manufacturability, scalability, and design-for-manufacturing objectives throughout the development process.
• Support supplier development, make-versus-buy decisions, tooling readiness, manufacturing process definition, and launch preparation.
• Coordinate with the Georgetown manufacturing team on process readiness, equipment readiness, capacity planning, pilot builds, production ramp-up, and launch execution.
• Facilitate regular project reviews, technical checkpoints, gate reviews, risk reviews, and launch readiness meetings.
• Track and report project progress, budget utilization, risks, issues, KPIs, and key decisions to stakeholders and senior management.
• Identify risks and issues that may impact project timeline, scope, cost, quality, or customer commitments, and lead recovery or mitigation plans.
• Maintain continuous alignment of project scope with company strategic objectives and recommend changes when needed to improve effectiveness.
• Support customer qualification activities, including sample delivery, validation documentation, technical issue resolution, and launch support.
• Initiate and complete post-launch product analysis, lessons learned, and feedback collection to support continuous improvement and future product iterations.
• Promote a culture of teamwork, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement within the product development process.

Qualifications

• A Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, or a related field, with the ability to learn the basics of product functioning, development, and testing cycles.
• A Master's degree is an asset.
• A minimum of 3 years experience as a Project/Program Manager, leading programs within a structured organization.
• Good knowledge of project management methodologies, stage-gate processes, risk management, resource planning, and project governance.
• PMP certification is preferred.
• Proficiency with project management tools and software such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or similar platforms.
• Strong communication and interpersonal abilities, with proficiency in engaging and influencing stakeholders at all organizational levels and external partners.
• Strong leadership and influencing capabilities, including the ability to motivate and direct cross-functional teams toward common objectives.
• Robust problem-solving and decision-making skills, characterized by a proactive and solution-oriented approach.
• Willingness to travel up to 20% of the time.
• Preferred: Experience in the HVAC sector.
• Advantageous: Familiarity with Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban).