Project Manager, Pre-commercialization
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Key details
- Location
- Walnut Creek, CA, United States
- Work style
- Onsite
- Level
- Senior
- Function
- Product / Program management
- Focus area
- other
- Posted
- 1w ago
Skills
About the role
BUILT ON FLAVOR. FUELED BY PEOPLE.
What’s it like to work at Kinder’s? Well, there’s a lot of snacking and geeking out over what we all cooked over the weekend. Beyond that, there’s also plenty of hard work. Because we don’t just like flavor, we’re obsessed with it.
With over 100 products sold nationwide, we’re now a top-five brand in multiple flavor categories at Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, and more. We’re not your typical CPG company. Privately held and founder-led, we like to think of ourselves as a pirate ship in a sea of cruise ships. Our crew is adventurous and fearless. We chart our own course and chase big ideas to make food unforgettable.
As we expand globally and approach $1 billion in revenue, we need more smart-and-scrappy, flavor-obsessed people to come aboard. If you’re looking for a place where you can see the real impact of your work... this is it! Every day, you’ll be part of a journey to add flavor to millions of meals and lives.
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.
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