Manager, Specification & PLM Systems

TEAM: Commercial Technology & Innovation Team
REPORTING TO: Senior IT Category Services Director
ABOUT US
tms unites technology, marketing, and sourcing to drive transformational change for the world's leading brands. With more than 1,400 employees across 28 countries, we offer an impressive range of solutions - from inspiration and innovation to category management and delivery.
Operating as a creative agency, a strategic consultancy, a sourcing business, and a technology provider, we engage with over 110 million customers every single day for our clients, including McDonald's, T-Mobile, O2, Starbucks, and adidas.
Most importantly, we're a place where you can achieve great things, and be recognized as the best.
WHAT MATTERS THE MOST
Breakthrough, business-driving ideas come from extraordinary people with the freedom to be their most authentic selves at work. Authenticity and diversity are critical elements of our business. They can only be realized when we create access and equity for all. We foster a culture of inclusion and belonging and aspire to be ever-evolving.
tms is a place where brilliant people are better together. If you want your ideas to be heard and to contribute to a culture of inclusion and authenticity, bring us your voice! Visit us at tmsw.com.
WHY WE THINK YOU WILL LOVE THIS ROLE
The Manager, Specification & PLM Systems will sit within our Commercial Technology & Innovation team.
The mission of this role is to drive the long-term evolution of our Specification and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platforms, ensuring they remain modern, scalable, and capable of delivering new business value and capabilities over time. As the product owner and platform steward for Centric and Specright, you will drive platform strategy, roadmap planning, and investment priorities while ensuring the systems effectively support the way our Packaging, Category, and GMS organizations operate.
Working closely with business owners and subject matter experts, you will translate business processes into platform capabilities, define and maintain requirements, ensure traceability across enhancements and releases, and prototype solutions. You will train yourself on new platform capabilities as Centric and Specright release them, staying abreast of innovation in the PLM and SDM space. You will lead the adoption of vendor innovations, evaluate new capabilities, and continuously optimize platform configuration to maximize business value and reduce reliance on customization.
This role is intentionally both strategic and hands-on. You will serve as the senior platform administrator, responsible for configuration management, security and permission administration, environment management, release and upgrade planning, data governance, and escalated application support. You will own the delivery backlog, establish governance and operating standards, and partner with vendors and service providers to ensure commitments, service levels, and quality expectations are met.
Ultimately, you will be accountable for creating a trusted foundation for product and specification data, enabling the business to innovate faster, improve compliance, strengthen data quality, and fully realize the value of our Specification and Product Lifecycle Management investments.
WHAT YOU WILL BRING TO THE ORGANIZATION
PLM & Specification Data Management (SDM) Ownership

• Own the PLM and SDM SaaS platforms end to end, from selection and onboarding through continuous capability expansion, renewal, and eventual replacement.
• Define and execute the multi-year product vision, roadmap, and investment strategy for Centric PLM, Specright SDM, and related business applications, aligning capabilities to business priorities.
• Serve as the product owner and senior platform steward, balancing business outcomes, platform sustainability, technical debt, and total cost of ownership.
• Lead the application portfolio lifecycle, ensuring stable operations, predictable releases, effective support, and continuous platform improvement.
• Partner with Packaging, Category, and GMS business stakeholders to understand business processes, define requirements, prioritize backlogs, and deliver capabilities that improve efficiency, compliance, and data quality.
• Translate business requirements into platform configuration and solution designs, validating outcomes with users through prototyping, testing, and iterative delivery.
• Establish and maintain the functional ownership model for PLM and SDM, defining which platform owns specific processes, data domains, and capabilities while minimizing overlap and redundancy.
• Govern specification, packaging, material, and product data standards, templates, workflows, ownership models, version controls, and approval processes across the product lifecycle.
• Maintain Specright and/or Centric as the systems of record for specification and product data while ensuring consistency, traceability, and synchronization across enterprise systems.
• Own the integration strategy and roadmap connecting PLM and SDM platforms with ERP, SIM, DataSphere, sourcing, supplier, manufacturing, quality, and compliance systems.
• Oversee integration design, testing, monitoring, and data reconciliation activities to ensure accurate and reliable downstream data consumption.
• Manage vendor release cycles, assessing new functionality, planning upgrades, validating business impact, and driving adoption of capabilities that maximize value while reducing unnecessary customization.
• Stay current on Centric, Specright, and broader PLM/SDM market trends, proactively identifying opportunities for capability expansion, platform consolidation, process improvement, and vendor rationalization.
• Establish platform governance, service level expectations, support metrics, security controls, and operational processes that ensure platform reliability and business continuity.
• Manage strategic relationships with software vendors, implementation partners, and managed service providers, holding partners accountable for contractual commitments, service levels, quality standards, and delivery outcomes.

Centric & Specright System Administration

• Serve as the senior system administrator for Centric PLM and Specright, owning the configuration, workflows, attributes, templates, libraries, and business rules that enable business process.
• Administer users, roles, groups, and permissions across both platforms, running periodic access reviews and maintaining segregation of duties.
• Manage environments, sandboxes, and configuration migration, coordinating upgrades, patches, and regression testing with minimal business disruption.
• Own tier-1 and tier-2 application support, triaging tickets, diagnosing root cause, and escalating to Centric or Specright support with clear reproduction detail.
• Maintain system and specification master data, including attribute libraries, templates, seasons, BOM structures, and reference data quality.
• Administer licenses, seats, and system settings, monitoring utilization and adjusting provisioning as the business changes.
• Document configuration decisions, administrative procedures, and runbooks, and train super users and business administrators.

Agile Delivery, Standards & Enablement

• Establish and maintain standards, templates, tools, and governance practices for business application delivery and change control.
• Standardize demand intake, prioritization, release reporting, RAID management, and platform health metrics.
• Support adoption and effective use of the PLM and specification toolset, ensuring reporting accuracy and data integrity.
• Own and groom the product backlog, partnering with the Scrum Master and/or Business Analyst to translate business needs into well-formed user stories with clear acceptance criteria.
• Partner with the Scrum Master on agile ceremonies across business and vendor delivery teams, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Work with the Scrum Master on story pointing, sprint capacity, and velocity to forecast delivery, set realistic expectations, and continuously improve throughput.

Vendor, Resource & Team Leadership

• Partner with the Vendor Management Office (VMO) to manage Centric, Specright, and other application partners, driving delivery to committed scope, timeline, and quality.
• Partner with the VMO on regular vendor business reviews, ensuring agreements, roadmaps, and support obligations are met.
• Work with the VMO and Procurement on licensing, subscription, and support renewals to optimize cost and utilization across the portfolio.
• Lead and develop the business applications team, providing guidance, coaching, and oversight of delivery and support processes.
• Manage capacity planning and resource allocation across platform initiatives and ongoing support demand.
• Partner with Finance, HR, and technology leaders on budgets, forecasts, and total cost of ownership for the application portfolio.
• Promote consistent operational discipline, documentation standards, and knowledge management across the team.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO HAVE

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience configuring, supporting, and evolving enterprise SaaS business applications, including product lifecycle management (PLM) or specification data management (SDM) platforms.
• Hands-on experience with Centric PLM, Specright, or a comparable platform (PTC Windchill, Siemens Teamcenter, Oracle Agile PLM, Bamboo Rose, or similar).
• Demonstrated system administration experience on Centric PLM, Specright, or a comparable enterprise platform, translating business process into configuration, workflow and business rule setup, user and role administration, and environment management.
• Experience owning escalated (tier-2/tier-3) application support, ticket triage, root-cause analysis, and vendor escalation.
• Experience planning and executing platform upgrades, patches, and regression testing with minimal business disruption.
• Demonstrated experience owning a SaaS platform roadmap, including vendor release adoption, capability expansion, and renewal or replacement decisions.
• Comfort operating at both levels: setting platform strategy, roadmap, and investment priorities with senior stakeholders, and working hands-on in the system to configure, test, and troubleshoot.
• Strong understanding of product development and NPD processes, including bills of materials, approval workflows, and specification data at both product and packaging level.
• Working knowledge of the distinction between PLM and specification data management (SDM), including the trade-offs between templated, product-first data structures and flexible, spec-first models.
• Experience with packaging and sustainability specification data and the reporting or compliance requirements it supports.
• Experience collecting, documenting, and maintaining traceability of business requirements across releases and updates.
• Experience partnering with business owners to map workflow processes and identify efficiency opportunities.
• Proven vendor management skills, including partnering with a VMO or procurement function on SOW and SLA oversight, escalation, and recurring business reviews.
• Experience managing vendor release cycles, including impact assessment, regression testing, validation, and production support.
• Hands-on experience delivering and supporting system integrations (APIs, middleware or iPaaS, EDI, and file-based feeds) between PLM or specification systems and downstream ERP, PIM, DAM, sourcing, and supplier platforms.
• Experience establishing and maintaining a specification or product data system of record, including data governance, versioning, master data alignment, and cross-system reconciliation.
• Hands-on experience owning a product backlog in an agile environment alongside a Scrum Master, including writing user stories and acceptance criteria, story pointing, sprint planning, and tracking velocity.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, and facilitation skills across business and technical audiences.
• Self-directed learner who stays current on vendor releases and industry innovation, building platform depth without formal training programs.
• Strong organizational and problem-solving skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Working knowledge of delivery methodologies, including Agile, Waterfall, and Hybrid models.
• Proficiency with delivery and support tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow, Smartsheet, and Microsoft 365.
• Experience establishing governance, change control, and data integrity standards for business applications.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, and mentor analysts and support staff.

And we'd love you to...

• Hold a Centric PLM administration or implementation certification.
• Bring experience in consumer products, retail, apparel, food service, or promotional merchandise supply chains.
• Have led a global PLM or specification management rollout across multiple regions and business units.
• Have built master data management, reporting, or analytics capabilities on product and specification data.

Starting salary between $145,000 - $155,000
TOTAL REWARDS
Our total rewards philosophy integrates programs for compensation, benefits, recognition, learning and development, corporate culture, corporate citizenship and work-life balance. While individual program components may differ by country, some things remain constant:

• Our commitment to rewarding results
• Opportunities to work with talented and driven individuals at every level of our company who respect each other, treat each other fairly and hold one another accountable for our customers'-and our company's-success

There's more ...

• Generous medical, dental, vision and other great benefits
• Paid parental and medical leave programs
• 401(k) with a company match component and profit sharing
• 15 days of paid time off plus company holidays
• Hybrid work model
• Tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment assistance
• Inclusive employee resource groups

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
RECRUITING AGENCIES
tms does not accept agency resumes submitted by third-party vendors unless a valid agreement has been signed and the tms Talent Acquisition Team has granted authorization for submissions for a specified position. Please do not submit or forward resumes to our site, tms employees, or any other company location. tms is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.
Nearest Major Market: Seattle