SCALE Regional Hub Project Manager

City: West Lafayette

Job Description:

Job Summary

The SCALE Regional Hub Project Manager serves as the connection between SCALE national staff at Purdue University and a SCALE regional hub pilot in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN. As a member of both headquarters and regional hub teams, they drive transparency and corrective action to achieve project schedule, promote reuse of national consortium resources and tools, ensure pilot hub processes and lessons learned are captured, and support cost and value analysis of regional hub approaches and operations. In so doing, they contribute to greater success of the pilot and its replication across SCALE to future regional hubs. Funded by the Department of War, SCALE enhances U.S. competitiveness and national security through a nationally coordinated and innovative approach to deliver the next generation microelectronics workforce (see: https://scale4me.org).

As a catalyst for pilot success and integration between national and regional teams, the project manager influences without authority. This entails collaboration with faculty, researchers, staff and employers associated with both teams, while meeting project management tracking and reporting expectations of the Department of War sponsor (NSWC-Crane). Ability to quickly build relationships across geographic locations, organizations, and work cultures is critically important since this is the first academic year of a complex initiative.

The successful candidate combines project management experience with organizational and interpersonal skills, the ability to manage multiple stakeholders with differing priorities, and comfort dealing with emergent issues related to pilot efforts. Continuation of this role beyond Sep 2027 is contingent on future funding for this or additional SCALE regional hubs. Availability to travel to Minneapolis/St Paul every 3 to 6 weeks is required.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Serve as Project Manager for SCALE's First Ever Regional Hub Pilot - Collaborate with regional hub to develop integrated project schedule and maintain project risk/issue list, ensuring transparency within regional team, national team, and DoW sponsor.
• Ensure National Resource Reuse and Two-Way Communication With Regional Hub Pilot - Minimize redundancy and maximize reuse of national resources (e.g.curriculum, tools, data collection and evaluation methods, onboarding). Capture list of exceptions as to where and why tailoring was necessary. Serve as first point of contact to regional hub on SCALE methods. Fully integrate with both national and regional teams and promote two-way communication. Connect regional team to individual national team members where most valuable.
• Champion Regional Hub Pilot Process Documentation, Including Lessons Learned - Ensure regional hub provides high-level process documentation by end of the first-year pilot. Collect lessons learned for each process and for the pilot overall.
• Lead Cost/Value Analysis of Regional Hub Workforce Dev Efforts - Utilize cost, participation, and evaluation data to complete cost vs value analysis of regional hub efforts and compare to alternate approaches. Identify cost structure for ongoing regional hub operations allowing sustainable operation of 2-3 concurrent hubs. Compare hub university metrics before and after the pilot and in reference to non-hub universities.

What We're Looking For:

• Bachelor in Engineering, Science, or Technology
• Six or more years of experience in program management, especially with projects that are cross-organizational, complex, adaptive, and involve multiple stakeholders and competing priorities
• Prior training and experience with process improvement methodologies (e.g. Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Six Sigma).
• Familiarity with common project management software and related tools (e.g. MS-Project, MS-Office).
• Ability to influence without authority, achieving engagement and commitment from others.
• Builds effective relationships across teams, locations, and work cultures
• Ability to collaborate effectively with faculty, staff, Department of War sponsors, and employers across the consortium
• Strong interpersonal, organizational, and problem-solving skills

What Is Helpful:

• MS or PhD degree

What We Want You To Know:

• Purdue will not sponsor employment authorization for this position
• A background check is required for employment in this position
• FLSA: Exempt (Not eligible for overtime)
• Retirement Eligibility: Defined Waiting Period