We are Kao, listed as one of the world’s most ethical companies for the last 20 years.
Our EMEA brand portfolio spans across three sectors; Consumer Care (John Frieda, Guhl, Bondi Sands, Bioré, Jergens, Curél), Professional Hair (Goldwell, Oribe, KMS Hair, Kerasilk), and Molton Brown.
Our corporate philosophy, The Kao Way, guides us in everything we do – acting with integrity, courageously driving innovation, and treating each other with trust and respect.
About our role:
The Project Manager is responsible for leading projects from initiation through completion while providing analytical support across business processes, requirements, reporting, and stakeholder decision-making. You will develop and manage project plans, coordinate cross-functional teams, tracks progress against objectives, manage risks and issues, and support governance and financial oversight. You will partner with business, technology, vendor, and regional stakeholders to define requirements, assess impacts, facilitate decision-making, and ensure successful delivery of strategic initiatives. The role combines project management, business analysis, and delivery coordination to drive business outcomes and operational readiness.
At Kao, we offer amazing benefits that are available to you on your first day of employment (healthcare, 401(k) plus company match), 36 total days off (vacation + holidays + sick) and a reasonable salary range of $90,000 - $110,000. We also offer a hybrid work schedule.
What you will do:
- Project Planning and Delivery Management: Develop and maintain project plans, timelines, milestones, dependencies, risks, issues, actions, decisions, budgets, and resource needs. Coordinate work across internal teams, vendors, and business stakeholders to keep delivery on track and aligned to approved goals.
- Business Analysis and Requirements Definition: Partner with business and technology stakeholders to understand needs, document requirements, map processes, assess business and system impacts, support prioritization decisions, and identify opportunities for process improvement.
- Execution, Monitoring, Reporting, AI Automation: Prepare clear status updates, dashboards, summaries, governance materials, and leverage AI-powered and automation tools to improve reporting efficiency and decision support.
- Stakeholder, Vendor, and Cross-Functional Solution Coordination: Facilitate communication across business teams, technology teams, vendors, and leadership stakeholders. Manage expectations, support prioritization discussions, follow up on open items, and ensure teams remain aligned on scope, timing, responsibilities, and outcomes.
- Risk, Change, Governance, and Transition Support: Identify and manage risks, issues, scope changes, and dependencies throughout the project life cycle. Support governance processes, change control, financial tracking, testing readiness, training coordination, lessons learned, and transition to ongoing operations.
What you will need:
- Bachelor’s Degree/4 year Business Degree required.
- 5+ years of relevant experience. Relevant experience should include a combination of project management, business analysis, process improvement, and technology delivery support. Ideal experience includes:
- Project Life Cycle: Leading or supporting end-to-end project life cycles from initiation to closure.
- Project Plans: Managing project plans, timelines, risks, issues, actions, decisions, and status reporting.
- Business Requirements: Gathering and documenting business requirements, process flows, user needs, and solution impacts.
- Stakeholder Delivery Management: Working with business stakeholders, technology teams, vendors, and regional partners to align scope and delivery expectations.
- Multi-Task Management: Supporting multiple concurrent projects, workstreams, or initiatives.
- Methodologies: Applying project management methods such as waterfall, agile, or hybrid delivery.
- Communicating Across Org Levels: Translating complex information into clear executive summaries, decision materials, and project updates.
- Tool Fluency: Using project and portfolio tools to maintain project data, reporting, financial tracking, and governance updates (Planview Pro, Asana, etc.).
- Change Management: Supporting change management, testing coordination, training readiness, and operational transition activities.
- Ideally you would have experience supporting technology-enabled business projects with the following types of scope:
- Project and Business Delivery:
- Project Delivery: Experience managing project plans, timelines, risks, issues, dependencies, budgets, status reporting, and governance activities across multiple concurrent initiatives.
- Business Analysis: Experience gathering requirements, documenting business processes, conducting impact assessments, identifying improvement opportunities, and translating stakeholder needs into actionable deliverables.
- Stakeholder Management: Ability to work effectively across business, technology, vendor, and leadership teams to drive alignment, facilitate decision-making, and achieve desired outcomes.
- Change & Adoption: Experience supporting testing, training, organizational readiness, deployment planning, change management, and transition-to-support activities.
- Technology and Digital Acumen:
- Technology Literacy: Ability to understand business applications, integrations, data flows, architecture concepts, and system dependencies to effectively coordinate solution delivery and assess impacts of change.
- Hands-On Technology Experience: Comfortable working directly within business and technology platforms to support configuration, administration, testing, troubleshooting, reporting, solution validation, and continuous improvement activities.
- Digital & Data Skills: Experience leveraging reporting, analytics, and visualization tools to monitor performance, identify trends, develop insights, and support business decision-making.
- Platform Exposure: Experience working with enterprise applications, ecommerce platforms, cloud technologies, integration solutions, workflow tools, and project portfolio management platforms.
- Modern ways of working:
- Artificial Intelligence & Automation: Experience utilizing AI-powered tools and automation capabilities to improve productivity, accelerate requirements gathering and documentation, enhance reporting and communications, support decision-making, and increase project delivery effectiveness.
- Continuous Improvement: Demonstrated ability to challenge existing processes, identify opportunities for simplification and automation, and implement practical improvements that increase efficiency and business value.
- Executive Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate complex business and technical concepts into clear presentations, status updates, dashboards, governance materials, and executive-ready recommendations.
- Project and Business Delivery:
- One or more of the certifications are preferred but not required.
- PMP, CAPM, CSM, PRINCE2, ACP, CompTIA Project+, MPM.
At Kao, we believe the diversity of our teams strengthens our global mission. Here we trust and respect each other, collaborating in a friendly and inclusive work environment to achieve great results.
What you can expect from us:
- An entrepreneurial environment where passionate and innovative teams come together.
- Respect, teamwork and collaboration are at the heart of how we work.
- A workplace culture that prioritizes employee wellbeing, with opportunities to get involved in initiatives such as Mental Health First Aiders, our Charity Committee, and DE&I communities
- A broad range of benefits, including flexible working, competitive salaries, health and wellbeing offers, pension schemes, insurance options, and more…
- Learning and development opportunities
Your voice matters here, we value entrepreneurial thinking and innovation from our teams.
To find out why 33,000 people across the Globe work at Kao please visit:
https://candidate-brochure.kao.com/kao-emea/full-view.html
https://www.kao.com/emea/en/careers/
Discover careers at Kao and how we live our purpose, Kirei – Making Life Beautiful.
https://kao.voyse.io/
Our Privacy Policy: https://www.kao.com/emea/en/privacy/
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree or four-year business degree
- 5+ years of relevant experience in project management, business analysis, process improvement, and technology delivery support
- Experience leading or supporting end-to-end project life cycles from initiation to closure
- Experience managing project plans, timelines, risks, issues, actions, decisions, and status reporting
- Experience gathering and documenting business requirements, process flows, user needs, and solution impacts
- Experience working with business stakeholders, technology teams, vendors, and regional partners
- Ability to manage multiple concurrent projects, workstreams, or initiatives
- Experience applying waterfall, agile, or hybrid project delivery methodologies
- Ability to communicate complex information through executive summaries, decision materials, and project updates
- Experience using project and portfolio tools for project data, reporting, financial tracking, and governance updates
- Experience supporting change management, testing coordination, training readiness, and operational transition
- Experience with technology-enabled business projects, business applications, integrations, data flows, architecture concepts, and system dependencies
- Experience with reporting, analytics, visualization tools, enterprise applications, ecommerce platforms, cloud technologies, integration solutions, workflow tools, and project portfolio management platforms
- Experience using AI-powered tools and automation capabilities to improve project delivery effectiveness
- Experience identifying process improvements, simplification, and automation opportunities
- PMP, CAPM, CSM, PRINCE2, ACP, CompTIA Project+, or MPM certification
What We Do
Ever since the company's founding in 1887, Kao has strived to deliver value to the life of people everywhere in the world. Today, we are a leading manufacturer in the fields of hygiene, beauty and health, while our chemical business contributes to the development of diverse industries. With more than 33,000 employees, our mission is to enrich the lives of people globally and contribute to the sustainability of the world. In the regions of Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), we focus on our Beauty Care business with premium brands in three business sectors: Consumer, Salon and Cosmetics. Our Business Sector represents skin and hair care brands that are recognized worldwide for their innovation and quality, such as Jergens, Curél, Bioré, Guhl, and John Frieda. Our Salon Business Sector is committed to unleashing the creativity of stylists around the globe. With our industry leading brands Goldwell, KMS and Oribe, stylists have everything in their hands to create beautiful show-stopping hair representative of the individuality of their clients. Our London-based boutique brand, Molton Brown, offers luxury beauty products found only in our exclusive Molton Brown stores, high-end department stores and travel retail, as well as five-star hotels around the world. All three business sectors are driven by the same values and beliefs: Creating high-quality products and constantly striving for the best is what is at the heart of everything we do. This is why we understand that our people are one of our core assets, and we strive for a working environment that allows team members to flourish and grow. Join us, and you will have opportunity to help us make life beautiful
