Project Manager, Pre-commercialization

How You Will Have an Impact at Kinder's:

The Pre-Commercialization Project Manager plays a critical role in helping Kinder's bring innovation to life by guiding new product opportunities through the earliest stages of development. You'll help build confidence that great ideas can become great products - ones that meet Kinder's high standards, delight our consumers, and can be successfully brought to market.

Working closely with the Senior Pre-Commercialization Project Manager, you'll guide innovation projects through discovery, feasibility, validation, and development. You'll bring the right people and information together, ask the questions that need to be answered, and connect the dots across functions to help teams make informed decisions and keep projects moving forward.

Pre-Commercialization is an exciting and critical step in bringing Kinder's innovation to life - where we build confidence in whether an opportunity is worth pursuing, whether we can create a product that meets our high standards and consumers' expectations, and whether we have the capabilities to successfully bring it to market. This role requires a balance of structure and agility: applying rigor where it adds value, adapting as we learn, and maintaining a bias toward action.

You'll own portfolio-level PMO analytics across all pre-commercialization projects, translating project data into clear insights that improve visibility, prioritization, resource planning, and decision-making.

You'll partner closely with Culinary, Innovation, R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, and Commercialization to help turn promising ideas into products we're proud to put the Kinder's name on.
What You'll Be Doing

Guide Innovation Through Pre-Commercialization

• Manage a portfolio of innovation projects through discovery, feasibility, validation, and development.

• Bring cross-functional teams together to clarify objectives, answer critical questions, and determine what is needed to move opportunities forward.

• Proactively seek out information, surface gaps, and connect inputs across functions to develop a clear and cohesive picture of each opportunity.

• Maintain momentum by driving actions, decisions, and accountability while adapting as new information and learnings emerge.

Guide Readiness and Feasibility

• Guide cross-functional teams in evaluating the relevant feasibility considerations for each opportunity, including culinary, technical, operational, supply chain, financial, and commercial needs.

• Ensure teams have the information needed to determine whether concepts can deliver against Kinder's standards and consumer expectations while being viable to commercialize.

• Identify and clarify key risks, assumptions, dependencies, capabilities, and open questions that need to be addressed.

• Help teams synthesize information and navigate trade-offs to support thoughtful, timely decisions.

Drive Project Planning and Cross-Functional Alignment

• Develop and maintain clear project plans in Wrike, including key deliverables, milestones, decisions, risks, and ownership.

• Lead project meetings, feasibility reviews, and cross-functional alignment sessions that drive decisions and action.

• Communicate project status, decisions, risks, and next steps clearly across teams.

• Proactively work through roadblocks and ensure stakeholders understand what's needed to keep projects moving.

• Facilitate effective handoff to Commercialization Project Managers with clear alignment and documentation of key decisions, assumptions, and requirements.

Own Portfolio Analytics and PMO Reporting

• Own and maintain PMO analytics across all pre-commercialization projects, providing a consistent and accurate view of portfolio health, stage, timelines, milestones, risks, dependencies, decisions, and resource needs.

• Develop and maintain portfolio dashboards, reports, and key performance indicators in Wrike and related tools to identify trends, bottlenecks, capacity constraints, and opportunities for improvement.

• Analyze project and portfolio data and translate it into actionable insights and recommendations that support leadership decisions, project prioritization, resource allocation, and timely escalation.

• Establish clear data standards and reporting cadences, and partner with project owners to ensure portfolio information is complete, current, and reliable.

Strengthen How We Work

• Leverage established Pre-Commercialization tools and frameworks to bring appropriate structure and consistency to project evaluation.

• Identify practical opportunities to improve tools, processes, and ways of working based on project learnings and organizational needs.

• Capture and share learnings that strengthen future innovation projects and cross-functional collaboration.

What You Bring to the Table:

• Action-oriented and comfortable making progress in the face of ambiguity and incomplete information.

• Strong situational awareness and business judgment, with the ability to know when to dig into the details and when to zoom out and connect the broader picture.

• Naturally curious and resourceful - you ask thoughtful questions, chase down information, and bring disparate inputs together to get to the answers teams need.

• Practical problem-solver who anticipates risks and downstream implications and works collaboratively to find a path forward.

• Clear, thoughtful communicator who listens to understand, builds trust across functions, and drives clarity, alignment, and momentum.

• Able to apply structure and rigor where it adds value without creating unnecessary complexity.

• Flexible and highly situationally aware, with the ability to read the room and adapt your approach to different people, situations, and changing priorities while maintaining strong relationships and forward momentum.

• Deep interest in how great food ideas become products that consumers love.

Skills / Experience

• 7+ years of experience in project management, innovation, product development, or cross-functional program management, ideally within a CPG, food, or beverage company.
• Experience guiding innovation projects through early-stage development, feasibility assessment, and commercialization readiness.
• Strong project planning, stakeholder management, problem-solving, and decision-support skills.
• Demonstrated experience owning portfolio-level PMO analytics across multiple projects, including building dashboards and KPIs, monitoring portfolio health and capacity, identifying trends and risks, and translating data into actionable recommendations for leadership.
• Proven ability to coordinate and influence cross-functional teams, coupled with a strong understanding of the breadth of work, priorities, constraints, and interdependencies across Culinary, R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, and Marketing.
• Experience with project management platforms such as Wrike, Smartsheet, Monday.com, or similar tools.
• Experience working in fast-paced, entrepreneurial, or high-growth environments preferred.

Personal Characteristics

• High ownership and accountability.
• Resourceful, adaptable, and comfortable operating in dynamic environments.
• Strong sense of urgency paired with thoughtful judgment.
• Values progress over perfection and knows when to make a call and move forward.
• Hungry to learn, grow, and contribute to a high-performing innovation function.
• Obsessed with flavor and excited to help build the future of Kinder's product portfolio.

Location + Pay Transparency:

This role will be located in our Walnut Creek, California office. The expected starting salary range for this role is $135,000- $155,000 per year. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range based on the location of the role. The amount a particular employee will earn within the salary range will be based on factors such as relevant education, qualifications, performance and business needs.

SEASONED FOR SUCCESS:

• No two days here are the same.
• We try to be good team members and good communicators, but we don't live by hierarchy and structure - everyone is a difference maker here.
• We make a lot of decisions in the face of incomplete information - our team embraces ambiguity and tries to make good decisions fast rather than great decisions slow.
• We believe our job is to take smart risk, not to eliminate risk.
• We believe in growing our skills and becoming a better company with more managerial expertise, but we are an entrepreneurial company at heart.
• We aren't trying to be average - we want to do exceptional things, and we are willing to work hard to achieve them.

BENEFITS THAT BRING MORE TO THE TABLE:

We offer a range of total rewards that may include paid time off, 401k, bonus / incentive eligibility, equity grants, competitive health benefits, and other family-friendly benefits, including parental leave. Kinder's benefits vary based on eligibility and can be reviewed in more detail during the interview process.

OUR RECIPE FOR BALANCE:

We believe great culture starts with people. We're a people-first company built on connection, collaboration, and balance. Most of our work happens in the office to spark creativity and community, but we also offer flexibility so team members have the autonomy to work outside the office when needed to support their work-life balance and personal commitments.