Senior Program Manager - Product Development

Job Summary

The Senior Program Manager (PM) – Motorcycle Development Excellence (MDE) will support our organization’s vision to improve efficiency throughout the Product Development Process. In this role, the successful candidate will drive program operations and lead project teams in the development of strategy, processes, and tools. The PM will be the expert in their processes and required support tools and act as a change agent while leading the execution of assigned initiatives across Motorcycle Development.

This role:

• Identifies opportunities and develops requirements, resource needs, and timeline to implement.
• Takes an active role in planning and executing projects from beginning to end independently or, at times, while also leading one or more business analysts.
• Builds strong connections with cross-functional peers.

WHAT You DO

• Drive Strategic Initiatives: Support the execution and on-time delivery of Product Development Excellence initiatives by collaborating with cross-functional teams.
• Resource Planning & Management: Assist in balancing and prioritizing work across Motorcycle Development, ensuring accurate tracking, and proactively work with leaders to resolve resource gaps.
• Data-Driven Insights: Analyze data to generate actionable insights and support continuous improvement efforts across product development operations.
• Process & Tool Optimization: Enhance the user experience of Product Development teams by building complimentary processes and enabling digital tools that improve quality, reduce friction, and unburden team members from non-value-added work. Foster a culture of continuous improvement and operational efficiency.

HOW You Work

• Program Culture: Consistently center the team on what is most important and why. Mitigate dysfunction and waste by continually refining program operations to ensure efficient, consistent, and effective execution (e.g., process, tools, communications). Clarify who is responsible for deliverables and timing and hold them accountable. Empower individuals and get decisions made at lowest level practical and ensure all stakeholders at all levels embrace their primary role.  
• Communication: Build critical cross-functional support and alliances by listening to understand key deliverables and developing solutions that deliver most efficiently to our business goals. Provide clarity throughout the program with clear written / verbal communication and driving team through ambiguity.
• Inspiration:  Drive effective transformation through creative and strategic problem solving.  Drive a culture of innovation by rethinking conventional approaches to product development process and metrics.

Education Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree Required. 
• Technical or Engineering degree preferred. 

Experience Requirements

• Typically requires a minimum of 3-5 years of program management experience in new product development.
• Design engineering and/or product development delivery is highly recommended.
• Program management certification and experience in process development/change management is ideal.
• Demonstrated experience in requirements gathering and user-story workshopping/mapping.
• Understanding of enterprise-wide application strategies and management, such as ERP, PLM, ALM, PPM.
• Demonstrated ability to successfully lead projects with proficiency in the use of program management methodologies (Agile/Sprint) and tools (JIRA, Miro, MS Project etc).
• Experience with department-wide resource management.
• Comfortable working with cross functional teams and reporting out to executive leadership.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Tool Suite, including Power Platform, and dealing with large abstract datasets is highly desired.
• Basic understanding of coding (VBA, DAX, Java, SQL, etc) and software development and configuration is preferred.
• Basic understanding of relational databases is preferred.