Global R&D Product Development Manager

Company Description

Cricut® makes smart cutting machines that work with an easy-to-use app, an ever-growing collection of materials, and crafting essentials to help you design and personalize almost anything — custom cards, unique apparel, everyday items, and so much more.

Let’s make.

Overview

We believe everyone is born creative. We’re a diverse tapestry of thinkers, dreamers, givers, DIYers, handi-workers, artisans, and forever and always architects of things.

At Cricut, we place the power of handmade into the hands of all. We give you beautiful, easy-to-master tools so you can make something unique, remarkable, perfect. We surround you with ideas, community, inspiration, and encouragement to take your creativity further than you ever imagined. And as a community, we celebrate the exhilarating act of making every single day.

So, make that handcrafted card that feels like a hug. Design a shirt for fun, for family, or for a full-blown business. Craft with a passion or for a purpose. Make something big and bold, itsy-bitsy, amazingly ambitious, or just plain silly. Whatever you make, just make your heart out. Because here’s the remarkable truth: When we all make together, we make all things possible.

Let’s make.

Job Description

The Global R&D Product Development Manager includes people management and product development with responsibility for project execution to drive incremental revenue, lower product costs, quality improvements, and new sources of supply and for innovation, ideation and the associated concept assessments.  This role collaborates across functions to drive other business and continuous improvement initiatives.  To be successful, the Global R&D Product Development Manager must play a leadership role in leveraging our global supply base and technical talent and encouraging a culture consistent with Cricut values and mantras.  The role will interface with Hardware and Software teams to bring new ecosystems to market.  Results are delivered by having a broad base of technical process and product development experiences, advance-level communication skills, statistical data analysis proficiency, Lean principle and problem solving skills, voice-of-customer experience, creativity, the ability to collaborate and influence with others, and drive results with speed. 

Responsibilities:

• People Management and Organization Development (45%) – Develop a team of technical talent using our chosen performance management system, Lattice.  Oversee team and individual work to ensure alignment and execution to business needs.  Includes mentoring, knowledge sharing and coaching as a subject matter expert in areas including product development, project management, statistical data analysis, and Six Sigma and ELS tools. 
• Project Leadership (30%) – Lead projects to meet business needs for incremental revenue, lower product costs, quality improvements, and new sources of supply in our chosen project management system, Arena.  Contribute to innovation ideation and lead concept assessments. 
• Collaboration and Culture Alignment (15%) – Represent the Consumables segment on cross-functional and global teams which require developing and maintaining productive, respectful relationships in an effort to understand business and customer needs and opportunities for clear project linkage.  Encourage a culture consistent with Cricut’s values and mantras.
• Ideation and Personal Professional Development (10%) – Includes customer focus, market research, designing and executing experiments, benchmarking and gathering information about competitors’ materials, costs, supply chain, technology, etc., test method development linked to product performance, analyzing suppliers and markets to identify trends, opportunities for competitive advantage, and new ideas for products and services.

Qualifications

• Prior work with colleagues in other regions of the world
• At least 7 years of product development experience using a stage gate methodology and project management/PLM software
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a materials field, with paper, vinyl, or writing utensils product development experience preferred

Other considerations:

• The position is global with Asia being the primary region.  Typical evening meetings are 2-3 evenings per week for 1-2 hours.  Microsoft Teams chats is a primary communication tool.  Managing a flexible work schedule that gives you work-life harmony is required.
• This position runs one of two pods for Cricut’s Consumables products and contains vinyl, paper, pens, and cutting mats.  Typical portfolio size is 30-40 efforts underway at any given time. 
• The Cricut culture runs deep in our team.  We work with high trust