Director, Project Management

Kion Group AG

$180K — $210K *
Manufacturing & Automotive
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Business or related field; Master's preferred.
  • 10+ years of project delivery experience, including 5+ in a senior leadership role.
  • Proven track record in delivering complex, multi-site industrial projects; MHE/automation experience preferred.
  • Experience managing multi-million dollar project portfolios and supplier networks.
  • Strong financial acumen with project P&L ownership and commercial negotiations experience.
  • Preferred certifications: PMP, MBA.

Responsibilities

  • Lead program delivery, including planning, resourcing, budgeting, scheduling, and execution.
  • Develop and implement repeatable execution models, playbooks, and governance practices.
  • Coach and manage project managers and teams, setting their objectives and KPIs.
  • Ensure commercial performance by managing P&L, change orders, and supplier performance.
  • Identify and manage risks, ensuring timely recovery plans are in place if issues arise.
  • Act as primary liaison with customers, senior leadership, and suppliers, providing clear reporting.
  • Enforce safety, compliance, and quality standards across all project sites.
  • Lead post-project reviews to drive continuous improvement.

Benefits

  • Opportunities for ongoing career development and coaching.
  • Involvement in high-complexity, impactful projects.
  • Exposure to a diverse range of projects and stakeholders.
  • The potential for travel, offering variety and engagement with different sites.
  • Access to professional development resources and certifications.
Full Job Description
Senior leader responsible for end-to-end delivery of complex MHE projects, driving schedule, cost, quality, safety and customer satisfaction across multiple concurrent programs.

The base pay range for this role is estimated to be $180,000 - $210,000 at the time of posting. Final compensation will be determined by various factors such as work location, education, experience, knowledge, and skills.

Tasks and Qualifications:

Core responsibilities:
  • Own program delivery: lead planning, resourcing, budgeting, scheduling and execution for multiple, high-complexity projects.
  • Build and run repeatable execution models, playbooks and governance to standardize delivery and capture lessons learned.
  • Lead and coach project managers, site leads and cross-functional execution teams; set objectives, KPIs and career development.
  • Ensure commercial performance: manage project P&L, change orders, claims and supplier performance.
  • Risk & issue management: identify, mitigate and escalate critical risks; drive timely recovery plans.
  • Stakeholder management: act as primary interface to customers, senior leadership and major suppliers; provide clear, timely reporting.
  • Drive safety & quality: enforce safety, compliance and quality standards across sites.
  • Continuous improvement: lead post-project reviews and apply learning curve gains to reduce engineering and PM effort on follow-ons.
  • Resource & supplier strategy: optimize internal and external capacity, pre-qualify vendors and secure critical long-lead items.

Required qualifications & experience:
  • Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Business or related field (Master's preferred).
  • 10+ years of project delivery experience, including 5+ years in a senior project leadership role.
  • Proven track record delivering complex, multi-site industrial projects (material handling equipment/automation experience strongly preferred).
  • Demonstrable experience managing multi-million dollar project portfolios and supplier networks.
  • Strong financial acumen with experience owning project P&L and commercial negotiations.
  • Certifications preferred: PMP, MBA

Key competencies & skills:
  • Strategic leadership and people-management skills.
  • Excellent stakeholder, negotiation and escalation management.
  • Strong planning, scheduling and earned-value familiarity (MS Project, Primavera or equivalent).
  • Data-driven decision making; uses KPIs and dashboards for performance management.
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills; comfortable at executive and customer forums.
  • Willingness to travel frequently to sites.

KPIs / success measures:
  • On-time delivery rate (projects completed to committed ROS).
  • Budget performance (% projects within +/- target).
  • Customer satisfaction / NPS for delivered sites.
  • Safety performance (TRIR / recordable incidents).
  • Change order rate and schedule growth (%).
  • Reduction in engineering and PM hours on follow-on sites (learning curve gains).
  • Supplier delivery reliability (OTD for long-lead items).


Reporting & scope:
  • Reports to Sr. Director of Project Execution
  • Directs a team of project managers and site leads; dotted relationships with engineering, procurement, manufacturing and service functions.
  • Responsible for a regional or global portfolio depending on company scale.


Nice-to-have:
  • Prior experience with Amazon or large e-commerce/3PL customers.
  • Background in automation, controls and systems integration.
  • Change management / transformation experience.

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