Customer Project Specialist, Manufacturing - Night Shift

Impact in this Role

At Fictiv, we’re building a company developing the operating system for sourcing custom mechanical parts. We already enjoy manufacturing and delivering highly complex, high-quality parts for our Fortune 500 customers who are building the future with products like autonomous electric vehicles, surgical systems, and industrial robots.

In your role as Customer Program Manager, you will be working directly with our US-based customers. You’ll use your engineering background, manufacturing process knowledge, and management experience to develop and implement effective and efficient program plans to ensure we execute programs within scope, budget, and timing while meeting or exceeding our customers’ expectations. You will be the customer’s point of contact, driving scope clarity (internally and externally), issue resolution, stakeholder management, and program success. You will oversee multiple programs across multiple regions, proactively managing risk, addressing customer requests, and coordinating across regional operations teams to keep programs on track and provide the corresponding program updates.

As an experienced team member, you will follow our defined processes and drive their use in a new region with new manufacturing partners. Additionally, you will actively identify areas for improvement in your workflow and the systems used by the Global Program Management teams and drive those improvements through cross-functional projects. You will also be working cross-functionally to support the development of robust processes to ensure the successful introduction of new service offerings that Fictiv launches to the public.

We have two sets of customers—our builders, who order parts through us, and our manufacturing partners, who manufacture and assemble these parts—and you’ll take the inputs from our builders and work with our manufacturing partners to deliver on our builders’ expectations. At Fictiv, we are building the operating system for custom mechanical parts through New Product Development, and you’ll be playing a critical role in making that happen.

You will report to the Tech Lead of Customer Program Management and work during US business hours.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Program Management: Manage projects with top-down oversight throughout execution to ensure success as defined by adherence to standards of scope, budget, and timeline.

• Planning: Develop robust project plans that meet the customer's expectations and coordinate various stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.

• Risk Management - Identify risks, implement risk mitigation plans, and coordinate with various stakeholders (internally and externally) to meet or exceed customer expectations.

• Requirements Management: gather, clarify, and flow down requirements through the end-to-end project life cycle. Identify and bridge any gaps.

• Customer Management and Relationship Building: Keep the customer informed on the program status, support change requests, drive issue resolution, and drive customer agreement/decision-making to keep the program on track, provide solutions to customers’ pain points, and help them succeed.

• Issue Resolution: Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Sales, Engineering, Mfg Ops, Quality, Process) and drive toward the optimal solutions.

• Change Order Management: Ensure post-sale change requests from all stakeholders are evaluated and appropriately addressed while mitigating any associated risks.

• Effective Communication: Communicate proactively with all involved personnel to guide and influence them toward defined strategies or objectives.

• Continuous Improvement: Identify areas of improvement and drive tactical and strategic improvements to the business operations.

• Program Performance Monitoring: Continuously monitor project progress in alignment with the Program Management metrics, provide visibility to the leadership team, and escalate when necessary.

• Resource Management: Manage resource planning in alignment with program needs, coordinate with functional leads to identify corresponding stakeholders, and address capacity/capability gaps.

Desired Traits

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (or equivalent) and 7-10 years of equivalent work experience with a minimum 5 years in a project management role within fast-paced hardware product development industries, working directly with US (or European)-based customers.
• Background in working with a minimum of three of the following manufacturing processes:
• Strong team orientation & communication skills, excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Fluent in written and spoken English, experience working in multinational environments.
• Previous experience working the night shift during US business hours.
• Proven project management skills: scope, timing, and quality management.
• Strong understanding of quality management, testing, sourcing, supply-chain management, logistics, and finance.
• Experience working with cross-functional stakeholders, managing project requirements, aligning expectations, and maintaining project communications through successful project completion.
• Experience in low volume and proto builds.
• Good understanding of the hardware product development process: EVT, DVT, PVT, MP.
• You are excellent with problem-solving skills.
• You are results-oriented.
• Possesses a good sense of urgency and demonstrates the ability to own and manage delivery schedules across tight deadlines.
• You are meticulous, detail-oriented, and inclined to documentation.
• You have a history of data-based decision-making.
• Self-starter, managing time efficiently, and can complete work on time without active supervision.
• Adaptable and gritty - you can work with ambiguous or under-defined processes while still being able to output work that meets the project's ultimate goals.
• You’re able to see the benefit of systems that can be both repeatable and adaptable, and you’re able to improve the reliability of these systems while maintaining their flexibility.
• Ability to work one of the following overnight shifts:
  • 9am-5pm Pacific Time (Mon-Fri)