Sr. Manager, Cost Management - IT Systems BU
Position Summary
The Senior Manager Business Unit Cost Management is responsible for establishing and leading the cost management strategy across the IT Systems Business Unit. This role will coordinate cost reduction, cost avoidance, value engineering, productivity, and margin improvement activities across all product lines within the business unit.
Responsibilities
Develop and lead the overall cost management strategy for the IT Systems Business Unit.
Translate business-unit financial and margin objectives into specific cost reduction and productivity targets by product line, product family, and program.
Establish annual, quarterly, and multi-year cost roadmaps aligned with the business unit’s strategic and financial plans.
Identify cost improvement opportunities across product design, materials, suppliers, manufacturing, logistics, quality, warranty, and lifecycle support.
Ensure cost management priorities are aligned with product strategy, customer requirements, quality, reliability, and time-to-market objectives.
Own the consolidated business-unit cost reduction and productivity plan.
Monitor performance against cost targets and identify gaps, risks, and recovery actions.
Drive corrective action when product lines are not on track to meet committed targets.
Challenge product-line teams to identify additional opportunities and exceed established cost commitments.
Ensure cost savings are validated, measurable, sustainable, and reflected in the appropriate financial reporting systems.
Provide strategic direction, governance, tools, and operating standards to product-line cost managers.
Conduct regular operating reviews with product-line cost managers to assess progress, risks, opportunities, and resource requirements.
Coach and develop the product-line cost managers while respecting their direct reporting relationships within the product lines.
Facilitate sharing of best practices, supplier intelligence, cost models, benchmarking data, and successful cost reduction approaches across the business unit.
Support the recruitment, onboarding, development, and succession planning of cost management talent throughout the organization.
Provide input to product-line leadership regarding the performance and development of the dotted-line cost managers.
Partner closely with product management, engineering, sustaining engineering, operations, supply chain, procurement, finance, quality, manufacturing, service, and commercial teams.
Ensure that cost considerations are incorporated into product roadmaps, new product development, sustaining engineering priorities, sourcing decisions, and lifecycle management.
Collaborate with finance to establish consistent cost baselines and validate realized savings.
Work with operations and manufacturing teams to improve labor efficiency, yield, throughput, overhead absorption, and conversion cost.
Ensure cost reduction actions do not create unacceptable risks related to safety, quality, reliability, regulatory compliance, customer performance, or supply continuity.
Establish a consistent business-unit cost management operating cadence.
Lead monthly and quarterly cost performance reviews with product-line and business-unit leadership.
Maintain a consolidated pipeline of cost reduction initiatives, including owners, timing, investment requirements, risks, and expected financial impact.
Implement stage-gate governance for major cost reduction and value engineering initiatives.
Define clear criteria for opportunity identification, approval, implementation, validation, and financial realization.
Develop dashboards and scorecards that provide transparent visibility into performance against targets.
Escalate material gaps, risks, dependencies, and decisions requiring executive intervention.
Develop and maintain cost models for major products, assemblies, components, and manufacturing processes.
Lead internal and external benchmarking to identify cost competitiveness gaps.
Analyze product cost structures and identify the primary drivers of material, labor, overhead, logistics, warranty, and service cost.
Use should-cost analysis, teardown analysis, market intelligence, and supplier benchmarking to identify improvement opportunities.
Improve the accuracy, consistency, and usability of cost data across the business unit.
Ensure design-to-cost and target-cost principles are embedded in the new product development process.
Establish cost targets at the beginning of product development programs and track progress throughout each development phase.
Participate in key product and engineering design reviews.
Ensure new products achieve cost, margin, quality, and performance objectives at launch.
Develop lifecycle cost improvement plans for existing product platforms.
Cook up prioritization of cost reduction projects based on financial impact, complexity, risk, and resource availability.
Ensure cost improvement opportunities are considered during product refreshes, redesigns, supplier transitions, and end-of-life planning.
Requirements
Bachelor’s degree in engineering, supply chain, operations, finance, business, or a related field.
Advanced degree, MBA, or equivalent business experience preferred.
Typically 12 or more years of experience in cost management, engineering, operations, supply chain, procurement, product management, finance, or a related discipline.
Significant experience leading cost reduction, value engineering, design-to-cost, or productivity programs in a complex product-based organization.
Demonstrated success delivering measurable and sustainable cost improvements.
Experience working across multiple product lines, business units, or global operating regions.
Strong understanding of product cost structures, including material, labor, overhead, manufacturing, logistics, warranty, and service.
Experience working with engineering and sustaining engineering teams.
Experience leading through influence in a matrixed organization.
Strong financial and analytical capabilities, including the ability to translate technical initiatives into financial outcomes.
Experience developing executive-level dashboards, operating reviews, and recovery plans.
Strong communication, negotiation, facilitation, and executive presentation skills.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience in data center infrastructure, IT systems, power management, thermal management, racks, rack power distribution, connectivity, remote management, or related hardware systems.
Experience with global supply chains, contract manufacturers, and complex supplier ecosystems.
Experience conducting should-cost analysis, teardown analysis, and competitive cost benchmarking.
Familiarity with product lifecycle management, ERP, cost accounting, sourcing, and business intelligence systems.
Leverage Lean, Six Sigma, value analysis/value engineering, or related certification.
Experience managing global teams or dotted-line functional organizations.
Leadership Competencies
Strong ownership and accountability for business results.
Ability to influence without direct authority.
Strategic thinking combined with disciplined execution.
Strong commercial, technical, and financial judgment.
Ability to challenge assumptions constructively.
Ability to create alignment across product lines and functions.
Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills.
Ability to operate effectively in a complex and fast-moving environment.
Strong talent development and coaching capabilities.
High level of credibility with engineering, operations, finance, supply chain, and executive leadership.
About Vertiv
Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) brings together hardware, software, analytics and ongoing services to enable its customers’ vital applications to run continuously, perform optimally and grow with their business needs. Vertiv solves the most important challenges facing today’s data centers, communication networks and commercial and industrial facilities with a portfolio of power, cooling and IT infrastructure solutions and services that extend from the cloud to the edge of the network. Headquartered in Westerville, Ohio, USA, Vertiv employs around 34,000 people and does business in more than 130 countries. Visit Vertiv.com to learn more.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Vertiv is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. We promote equal opportunities for all with respect to hiring, terms of employment, mobility, training, compensation, and occupational health, without discrimination as to age, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, disability, or any other protected characteristic.