Project Manager Level 3 - San Leandro, CA

At Ghirardelli, we're on a mission to become a one billion dollar brand and beyond. We want to be every consumer's first choice of premium chocolate, and we believe we can do that through our products and the way we do business, which are all inspired by our brand commitment to Making Life A Bite Better. We are a company committed to both personal and professional growth and believe that each employee contributes directly to Ghirardelli's growth and success.

The Project Manager III is responsible for leading the cross-functional effort to execute high priority, high complex projects across one or more categories including project portfolio management for specified categories.

Depending on the experience of the candidate, a Project Manager II would be considered with scaled back responsibilities to still lead high complexity projects across categories, but not manage a category portfolio or have people-management responsibilities.

This role ensures the successful launch of tier 1 and tier 2 new product development projects, high-complexity product changes, and time-critical initiatives through cross-functional collaboration and supply chain coordination. The role also involves project portfolio management, aligning projects with the company's strategic game plan to optimize resources.

Junior level Project Managers may report into this role.

The Project Manager III works side-by-side with cross-functional team members to:

• Manage project portfolio by overseeing selection, prioritization, and execution of the portfolio. Aligning projects with organizational strategy and optimizing resource allocation to achieve maximum efficiency.
• Create project plans and timelines to document scope, requirements, key timings, milestones and decision points, based on internal & external constraints, slack time and launch dates in order to deliver projects on time and in full.
• Manage cross-functional team members and business processes to ensure timelines are maintained and decisions are made on time.
• Capture and maintain project data in the Product Lifecycle Management and other applicable systems to ensure team members can access current/latest project information.

• Develop and maintain tracking tools, for instance Key Performance Indicators, ensuring milestone, timeline and performance visibility to the cross-functional team and the larger organization, and implement process changes to improve performance as needed and agreed.
• Develop, maintain, and improve standard tools and processes for a systematic approach to routing new products, seasonal and in-and-out items, and other time-critical products through the Supply Chain, and train cross-functional team members on these tools and processes.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement in project delivery performance.
• Facilitate team meetings as required, and ensure these meetings are systematic with agendas, decisions and actions recorded and distributed.
• Create a culture of ownership within the team, supporting Sr. Project Manager in development and execution of team vision and strategy.

• Anticipate potential problems or issues and proactively work with the cross-functional team to gather information required to make well-informed decisions and head off problems.
• Resolve conflicts within the team wherever possible. Manage escalations along functional management lines where conflicts cannot be resolved within time and/or wherever project delivery to agreed timing may be in jeopardy.
• Present status updates upon request to various audiences up to and including the business management team.
• Provide overall business oriented and objective leadership to cross-functional team.
• Confidence to elevate concerns to management team in an unbiased manner

• People Manager: Hire, develop and manage performance of junior Project Managers as business needs dictate.
• Create an inclusive environment that embraces our values and purpose.
• May perform other duties as assigned.

Complete special projects and other duties as assigned or as necessary.

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering or other relevant discipline
• 7+ years in CPG industry or in other industries managing projects with multiple parties and complex timelines and/or leading cross-functional teams
• New product development/commercialization, brand management or supply chain management experience in consumer products industry preferred
• Project Management skills including use of MS Project and Smartsheet
• PMP certification or proven consistent track record of delivering multiple high-complexity projects simultaneously is a requirement