Senior Project Management Specialist

Job Summary

Lead and manage a wide range of complex research and development projects for Nestlé Nutrition's Global Baby Food Meals & Drinks Category, with a consumer-centric, growth mindset, and passion for innovation. Includes the development of new science & technologies, new product launches, development of strategic roadmaps & pipelines, and new concept development. Lead projects from the front end of innovation through industrialization and to launch.

Job Responsibilities

• Lead the definition and communication of project scope, objectives, and expectations in collaboration with senior management and stakeholders
• Navigate and facilitate Front-End innovation activities, distilling complexity and ambiguity and swiftly creating actions to enable decision making
• Align on the strategy and approach for initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing the project
• Identify the project resource requirements and lead project planning
• Build and manage the end-to-end project schedule, define the critical path, track activities to ensure functional team members are meeting agreed upon deadlines, generate, and communicate status reports, and escalate critical issues
• Build and maintain project budget
• Connect Science and Technology data, facts and people to deliver solutions with competitive advantage
• Proactively manage roadblocks and risk mitigation plans
• Career Development
• Coordinate and facilitate project meetings including kick-off meetings, project team meetings, risk assessments, and additional meetings as required
• Engage and communicate effectively with partners, stakeholders, and decision makers
• Coordinate and facilitate post launch reviews and communicate key learnings and proposed continuous improvement actions
• Responsible for the consistent application, disciplined execution, and continuous improvement of Nestlé’s I&R processes and tools
• Project Leadership
• Apply coaching and influencing skills to lead cross-functional and multidisciplinary teams, by embracing details and ambiguity while keeping a general view to reduce complexity and to strive for rapid but informed management decisions
• Unite and energize team members behind a shared vision, guiding and motivating them to achieve project objectives
• Create an environment that encourages diversity of thought and constructive challenge/debate
• Bring structure, transparency, and clarity to project teams during times of complexity, chaos and/or ambiguity
• Foster collaboration amongst team members, ensuring effective information flow and timely resolution of challenges
• Minimize risk and increase project impact by creating alternative scenarios in an agile way to ensure project performance in terms of quality, speed, cost
• Be the guardian of project management excellence by mastering tools and coaching peers and project team members to deliver the highest value
• Connect internally and externally to identify opportunities to leverage knowledge and to enhance competitive advantage
• Coach Project Managers to build their skill sets

Qualifications (Education, Experience and Knowledge)

• Proven (at least five years) experience in project management of large-scale cross-functional and multidisciplinary projects with high business impact, preferably in a research / innovation driven environment
• Experience in FMCG industry, in R&D and/or Operations/Manufacturing
• BS in related science fields (e.g., Food science, Material sciences, Agricultural or Environmental sciences, Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Packaging, or related sciences)
• Project Management certification (e.g., PMP, ITIL, COBIT) and/or Nestlé PM dossier is a plus
• Demonstrated Innovation mindset, with Consumer, Customer and Business Opportunity thinking
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to lead, energize and steer multifunctional teams and to collaborate effectively with stakeholders.
• Excellent coaching skills
• Demonstrated growth mindset, with agility, courage, curiosity and resilience, adaptability to navigate in uncertain and ambiguous contexts and embracing risk mindset
• Ability to travel 10 - 20%, domestically and internationally.