Program Manager

Lead assigned programs across the full lifecycle, including RFQ and feasibility support, program award and kickoff, product and process development, prototype and validation phases, tooling and industrialization, PPAP and launch readiness, Start of Production, post-launch stabilization, and formal handoff.

Establish program objectives, scope, assumptions, deliverables, governance, and cross-functional responsibilities in alignment with the approved customer offer and business case.

Lead program kickoff meetings, recurring program reviews, APQP reviews, design reviews, gate reviews, launch-readiness reviews, and program closeout activities.

Provide functional leadership to cross-functional program teams without direct supervisory authority. Establish clear commitments, action owners, due dates, and escalation paths.

Facilitate cross-functional decision-making and document key program assumptions, decisions, approvals, and changes.

Prepare concise, professional program status reports and presentations covering timing, cost, quality, technical status, risks, decisions, and required management support.

Serve as the primary customer program interface and coordinate customer communications across commercial, technical, quality, timing, and launch topics in partnership with the appropriate functional representatives.

Coordinate customer meetings, submissions, portal responses, deliverables, and approvals, ensuring commitments are understood and completed on time.

Collaborate with the Sales Account Manager and cross-functional team to support RFQ responses, including feasibility, timing, technical content, investment, piece price, risks, and customer-offer preparation.

Maintain effective communication with Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Purchasing, Sales, Finance, Supply Chain, and other stakeholders across applicable regions and sites.

Develop and maintain an integrated cross-functional program master timeline containing customer, product, process, tooling, validation, purchasing, supplier, quality, logistics, and launch milestones.

Identify critical-path activities, dependencies, resource constraints, and schedule deviations, and coordinate practical recovery plans.

Maintain an active program risk, opportunity and issue register with impact, likelihood, mitigation actions, responsible owners, due dates, and escalation plans.

Identify deviations from approved timing, cost, quality, technical, and resource objectives and promptly escalate significant risks with clearly defined recovery recommendations.

Identify unresolved gaps and elevate them to the appropriate functional management.

Monitor program financial performance against the approved business case, including development expense, prototype costs, tooling investment, capital expenditure, piece cost, and projected gross margin.

Coordinate with Sales, Finance, Engineering, Purchasing, Costing, and Operations to identify financial variances and implement or elevate recovery actions.

Coordinate tooling and material procurement, prototype delivery, production-tooling commitments, and related customer invoicing for pre-production expenses.

Support commercial impacts, customer negotiations, and recovery actions associated with scope changes, timing changes, engineering changes, canceled or obsolete materials, premium freight, and other program impacts.

Lead cross-functional evaluation of customer and internal engineering changes, including effects on product performance, validation, tooling, manufacturing process, timing, investment, piece price, inventory, logistics, and program risk.

Ensure changes are documented, internally approved, commercially addressed when applicable, communicated to affected functions, submitted through required customer portals, and implemented through the appropriate change-control process.

Maintain traceability of open and approved changes, implementation timing, cost recovery, and affected deliverables.

Coordinate with responsible functional owners to ensure DFMEAs, PFMEAs, Process Flow Diagrams, Control Plans, validation plans and reports, PPAP documentation, and other required APQP deliverables are completed, reviewed, approved, and submitted in accordance with customer and internal requirements.

Lead regular cross-functional APQP meetings and drive internal and customer-related open issues to…