Project Manager – New Product Development, Cold Plate Business

Company Overview

Vertiv, a global organization with 31,000 employees and a turnover of 8 billion USD, designs, builds and services critical infrastructure that enables vital applications for data centers, communication networks, and commercial and industrial facilities. We support today’s growing mobile and cloud computing markets with a portfolio of power, thermal and infrastructure management solutions.

Vertiv is publicly traded at NYSE (VRT) with Global Headquarters in Westerville, Ohio, USA and a global presence with design, manufacturing and customer experience centers in America, Europe- Middle East -Africa and Asia/Pacific regions.

Job Summary

We are seeking a Project Manager – New Product Development to lead cross-functional projects for the development, customization, industrialization, and launch of cold plate products and liquid cooling solutions.

As part of the global Thermal Program management team, the Project Manager will be responsible and accountable for managing projects from inception to product launch, including new product development, customer-specific engineered-to-order solutions, product customization, and product transfers into production. This role will coordinate the efforts of engineering, product management, manufacturing engineering, operations, procurement, quality, order fulfillment, logistics, service, marketing, sales, and other cross-functional teams to ensure successful project execution.

The Project Manager has no direct reports but will manage people indirectly. The Project Manager is responsible for projects scope, schedule and budget. Project manager is also driving the team to achieve the objectives of product costs and Time to Market.

The successful candidate must be able to navigate complexity, influence without direct authority, foster strong stakeholder relationships.

While located at the organization in Georgetown, TX this role operates in an international and multicultural environment. 

The Project Manager must maintain continuous alignment of program scope with Company strategic business and other organizational objectives, make recommendations to modify the program to enhance effectiveness, highlight any possible situation hindering achievement of program results and elaborate a recovery plan.

The context in which the Senior Program Manager operates is characterized by complex relationships in an international and multicultural environment, typical of large organizations. The Project Manager therefore must be able to navigate complexities, foster relationships, and maintain communication with stakeholders at multiple levels, including those external to the organization.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The Project Manager will be responsible for leading end-to-end project execution for cold plate new product development and introduction. Key responsibilities include:

•              Lead cross-functional projects for new cold plate product development, engineered-to-order customer solutions, product customization, and product transfers into manufacturing. 

•              Manage projects in accordance with the corporate NPDI / New Product Development and Introduction process. 

•              Develop, maintain, and execute project plans, including timelines, milestones, deliverables, resource plans, budgets, risk registers, and dependency tracking.

•              Own project scope, schedule, budget, risk management, escalation, and overall execution performance. 

•              Coordinate cross-functional teams including engineering, product management, manufacturing engineering, operations, procurement, quality, logistics, service, marketing, sales, and order fulfillment. 

•              Work with functional leaders globally to identify and secure the resources required to adequately staff projects. 

•              Ensure project execution remains aligned with the manufacturing strategy, production capabilities, and launch readiness. 

•              Drive alignment between project scope, business strategy, customer requirements, product roadmap priorities, technical feasibility, and manufacturing capability. 

•              Collaborate closely with Product Management to define product requirements, specifications, customer needs, business cases, and launch priorities. 

•              Work closely with Engineering to support design, development, validation, and release of cold plate solutions that meet performance, reliability, quality, and cost targets. 

•              Support key development activities including design reviews, prototype builds, thermal and mechanical validation, design verification, product qualification, and production readiness. 

•              Drive product cost, manufacturability, scalability, and design-for-manufacturing objectives throughout the development process. 

•              Support supplier development, make-versus-buy decisions, tooling readiness, manufacturing process definition, and launch preparation. 

•              Coordinate with the Georgetown manufacturing team on process readiness, equipment readiness, capacity planning, pilot builds, production ramp-up, and launch execution. 

•              Facilitate regular project reviews, technical checkpoints, gate reviews, risk reviews, and launch readiness meetings. 

•              Track and report project progress, budget utilization, risks, issues, KPIs, and key decisions to stakeholders and senior management. 

•              Identify risks and issues that may impact project timeline, scope, cost, quality, or customer commitments, and lead recovery or mitigation plans. 

•              Maintain continuous alignment of project scope with company strategic objectives and recommend changes when needed to improve effectiveness. 

•              Support customer qualification activities, including sample delivery, validation documentation, technical issue resolution, and launch support. 

•              Initiate and complete post-launch product analysis, lessons learned, and feedback collection to support continuous improvement and future product iterations. 

•              Promote a culture of teamwork, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement within the product development process

QUALIFICATIONS

• A Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, or a related field, with the ability to learn the basics of product functioning, development, and testing cycles. A Master's degree is an asset.
• A minimum of 3 years experience as a Project/Program Manager, leading programs within a structured organization
• Understanding of the product development lifecycle, from concept ideation to commercialization.
• Good knowledge of project management methodologies, stage-gate processes, risk management, resource planning, and project governance
• PMP certification is preferred.
• Proficiency with project management tools and software such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or similar platforms
• Strong communication and interpersonal abilities, with proficiency in engaging and influencing stakeholders at all organizational levels and external partners.
• Strong leadership and influencing capabilities, including the ability to motivate and direct cross-functional teams toward common objectives.
• Robust problem-solving and decision-making skills, characterized by a proactive and solution-oriented approach.
• Willingness to travel up to 20% of the time.
• Preferred: Experience in the HVAC sector.
• Advantageous: Familiarity with Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban)