Senior Food Commercialization Project Manager

Job Purpose

Support profitable business growth with key customers by managing and successfully delivering new product development (NPD) projects. Lead cross-functional teams to develop projects that meet customers’ expectations and ensure projects are commercialized on time and in full.

Essential Functions

• Deliver customer-driven NPD projects for key customers on time and in full
• Align with Sales and R&D on clear project briefs and understand the customer’s NPD process and milestones to ensure their expectations are met
• Create and manage project timelines, lead team meetings, identify resource requirements, set expectations, assign tasks and responsibilities, follow up, and track/report progress
• Lead cross-functional project team through NPD process and ensure adherence to key milestones and overall timeline
• Create and maintain comprehensive and up-to-date project documentation
• Identify, mitigate, and escalate risks to the achievement of project milestones as required
• Conduct post-mortem analysis for key projects to identify root cause of successful/unsuccessful project execution
• Understand our business, our key customers’ business, and the competitive environment and encourage strategic insight-driven NPD
• Attend and support customer calls, meetings, presentations, and ideation sessions as needed
• Support the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of cross-functional processes and ways of working
• Support food safety program, quality standards, and legality of manufactured products
• Perform other job-related duties as assigned

Qualifications (Education, Experience, Competencies)

• Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree in project/business management, marketing, or related discipline preferred
• 5+ years of experience managing complex new product development projects
• Project management certification preferred
• B2B or B2C food industry experience preferred
• Understanding of basic revenue and pricing models, and profit and loss
• Working knowledge of project management tools/software
• Proficient with Microsoft Office
• Self-motivated leader with a collaborative and positive attitude
• Demonstrated ability to influence, engage, and motivate cross-functional teams
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in customer-facing and internal situations
• Ability to relate and connect the product, consumer, and competitors
• Strong organizational skills with attention to detail
• Proven ability to effectively prioritize and manage multiple tasks and projects concurrently
• Ability to deal with ambiguity and work effectively under pressure