Senior Innovation Program Manager – Digitalization

Overview

The Senior Innovation Program Manager – Digitalization leads and coordinates a strategic, enterprise-wide Digitalization of Innovation program. The role focuses on transforming innovation and product development from document-centric to data-centric work, establishing connected information flows and digital thread capabilities across engineering, quality, IT, data, and business functions. The aim is to enable AI-enabled innovation, improved lifecycle traceability, and data-driven decision making.

The Program Manager works with business leaders and cross-functional stakeholders to deploy digital engineering capabilities, align transformation initiatives, and accelerate adoption of new ways of working to increase innovation effectiveness and productivity. The Senior Innovation Program Manager facilitates small, multi-site programs, ensures alignment with organizational objectives, and demonstrates advanced entrepreneurial skills under limited supervision.

The role collaborates with stakeholders to secure agreement on program goals, manage scope, schedule, budget, risks, and expected deliverables, and to monitor interdependencies and maximize program benefits.

• Facilitate management of small, multi-site programs within multiple business/market/functions, ensuring alignment and applying entrepreneurial skills under limited supervision.
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to secure agreement on program goals and to manage scope, schedule, budget, quality, resources, and risks; negotiate effective solutions to achieve objectives.
• Define and monitor expected deliverables and interdependencies; integrate progress and outcomes into the program’s end products or services to realize benefits.
• Guide and support team members and project managers, fostering professional growth while ensuring adherence to program tolerances and budget constraints.
• Analyze program risks and issues, identify mitigation actions, and foster a risk-aware environment that supports constructive risk-taking and continuous improvement.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to stakeholders, maintain partnerships, and add value beyond immediate requests; leverage commercial skills for negotiation and subcontract management.
• Implement change management strategies to realize short-term business benefits and exercise judgment on key process decisions with cross-business stakeholders.
• Use advanced analytical skills to address high-complexity requests, applying conceptual thinking to develop innovative solutions and strategies.
• Support the execution of the Digitalization of Innovation roadmap, ensuring alignment across business units, engineering disciplines, and enabling functions.
• Facilitate alignment between business, engineering, quality, IT, and data teams to deploy digital engineering capabilities and improve innovation effectiveness.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, and digitalize engineering and innovation processes; promote best practices and knowledge sharing.

• Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering (preferred), Systems Engineering (preferred), Electrical Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, Project Management, Program Management or equivalent.
• 7+ years of experience leading large-scale R&D, engineering, digital transformation, innovation excellence, or business transformation programs in complex global organizations.
• Proven experience standardizing innovation and product development processes across multi-site and multidisciplinary R&D organizations.
• Experience establishing and scaling Digital Thread capabilities across the product lifecycle, including integration of PDM, PLM, ALM, ERP (SAP) and engineering tool chains.
• Experience implementing Model-Based Engineering (MBE/MBSE) principles and digitalization strategies to improve product development effectiveness and traceability.
• Experience leading enterprise-wide data governance, data integrity, and lifecycle traceability initiatives in regulated environments.
• Proven track record driving organizational change, capability building, and adoption of new ways of working across global engineering communities.
• Experie…