Director of Project Management for Gas Sensor startup in Newark, CA

High visibility position in a fast-growing vertically integrated company. In this critical role, you will be responsible for Technical/Business Program Management of multiple product lines responsible for the development projects from initial proposal phase through production launch. Tasks/efforts include chairing weekly development team meetings, resolving technical issues, driving critical path schedule tasks, supporting customer interaction, ISO/Dev. Process compliance, presentations to senior management, Customers and on occasion the Board of Directors. If you enjoy being in a critical path, driving role in which you make a significant impact in launching products to market, this is the right opportunity for you!

Responsibilities
• Establish and maintain a standard set of practices, processes and templates for managing cross-functional team projects consistently and efficiently to reduce project related risk and costs
• Design and Implement system and tools to enable rapid NPI for product development teams, and provide departments loading and expense data to enable project allocation decision making
• Report new product introduction (NPI) project status to senior management on a regular basis, effectively communicating risk assessment to support effective decision making.
• As part of the NPI process, assist with NPI material planning in conjunction with the operations team.
• Identify, scope and lead cross-functional process improvement projects impacting product development efficiency and on-time execution in collaboration with other departments and teams.
• Facilitate negotiation and conflict resolution across all levels and departments, assigning actions and escalating as needed.
• Help to facilitate smooth work flows through gap identification and support to fill gaps where necessary.
• Work with industry experts to stay aligned to latest project management best practices and trends, document and train the company staff.

Required Skillsets
• 5-10 Years of experience in project management, operational planning, process improvement in a fast paced environment
• 5 years of experience directly managing engineering teams
• 5 years of experience of managing operations teams
• In-depth experience with highly technical projects preferably in the semiconductor industry from design initiation through shipment
• Expertise in project management where process or structure does not exist
• Strong communicator who can effectively communicate at all levels within the Company
• Ability to influence and negotiate with cross-functional teams
• Sense of urgency to meet internal customer requirements
• High level of integrity in creating and honoring commitments
• Proven ability to drive change and create rapid, measurable improvements
• Intermediate to advanced Excel, PowerPoint and Data Analysis skills

Desired Skillsets
• Bachelor’s degree in information systems, engineering, business management, or related discipline
• Experience working with a variety of project management and business analytic tools (e.g., Workfront, Agile, Oracle, JIRA, MS Office Suite, SharePoint)
• Project management professional (PMP) certification
• Must be capable of managing priorities and schedules for multiple development teams (consisting of Design Engineering, Product & Test Engineering, QA, Reliability, Operations, Purchasing, etc.) to assure new product customer specification compliance, cost targets, critical milestones, prototype sample on-time deliveries, etc.
• Must be capable of developing detailed MS Project Schedules and presenting project critical path status/issues/actions to management.
• The candidate must be very detail-oriented with strong organizational and communication skills.