Position Summary

Join Worthington Enterprises as a Manager of Product Development. This role will be responsible for leading the project management function and driving key organizational projects to completion, including Innovation and new product developments (NPD) within the business's North American Building Products (NABP) growing portfolio.

NPD management to vary from painpoint identification (Stage Gate 0) to full commercial product launches (Stage Gate 5). As such the PM will work between sponsors, corporate support functions, immediate team members and plant level employees. This individual must have the ability to influence and lead teams that do not directly report to them. The right-fit candidate will be comfortable in self-directed, collaborate environments. Should have a proven record of developing and leveraging strong working relationships to generate positive outcomes. Ideal candidate should be comfortable leading diverse teams in ambiguous and/or uncertain situations

We are seeking a driven, creative, team player excited to take product management ownership and looking to grow and thrive in human centric innovation and entrepreneurial environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead project management function on NABP Innovation team
• Managing project definition phase: enlisting sponsorship, identifying key stakeholders, onboarding team members, and set a defined scope of work
• Managing project planning phase: risk management, estimating, scheduling, resource management
• Managing projects through the development process system (Stage Gate): Measuring and communicating progress through scheduled status and gate meetings, assessing project and timeline risks, remove roadblocks, corrective action plans through a successful project launch
• Influencing positive outcomes: schedule cross-functional team meetings, one-on-ones, timely feedback, issue identification with project team members
• Bring best practices and continually advance our Stage Gate
• Track and report project milestones to senior leadership
  

Critical Skills, Knowledge and Abilities

• Entrepreneurial, trail blazer spirit - energized to try new, building & testing hypotheses in an agile method to learn quickly and iterate again
• Human Centric Design and/or Innovation and/or complex problem solving experience, especially non-product value add creation (eg new profit model, network, channel, user experience, professional relationships)
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity - with team, work through unknowns to lead and step through front end "fuzzy" innovation and market intel to feed Innovation funnel with opportunities (Stage Gate 0-1)
• Market research experience - specifically in collecting and interpreting market intel to inform new value-add opportunities (Stage Gate 0 - 1) and start identifying key assumptions or unknown for the team to test
• Influencer - is able to develop effective relationship and credibility with local team members who may not directly report to them.
• High performer - believes encouraging effective behavior is the key to project success
• Self-directed - confident and capable in ambiguous environments; believes work product is a reflection of one's self
• Problem structuring / resolution - seeks to understand the core of an issue before solving. Once understood, moves to resolve the issue in a timely and collaborative effort. Does this with optimism.
• High business acumen - understands which levers impact a company's bottom line and which are proxies to success. Candidate is capable of separating the two and aligning resources accordingly
• Collaborator - ability to work with cross-functional team members in a manner that encourages open dialogue and input into key project issues
• Curious & Learning mindset - willing and open to change approach, grow and learn from others
• Leadership - ability to inspire and motivate diverse teams
• Communication - clear communicator, tailoring messaging to audience and effectively gets to point

Desired Experience

• Previous work experience in sales, marketing, customer service or equivalent role
• Prior exposure to PMO and agile vs traditional project management to understand pros/cons and bring best practices
• Previous work experience providing coaching and feedback to direct and indirect team
• Previous work experience in Industrial Products a plus
• Previous work experience with software or connectivity hardware a plus
• Previous work experience in NPD process encompassing Ideation through Manufacturing & Product Launch a plus
• History of success in a collaborative work environment
• Previous work experience dealing with manufacturing and/or sourcing partners
• Effective cross-functional resource and project meeting management and/or sourcing partners

Education/Training Required

• Minimum 5-10 years work experience in product or project engineering or technical role within a project team; or equivalent combination of strategy, technical and/or financial project management
• Minimum 2+ years work experience in project management; familiarity with Project Management tools and/or software packages
• PMP certification or desire to work towards