Director of Project Management

Job Summary

The Director of Project Management (PMO) leads a team of project managers responsible for the planning and execution of both New Product Development (NPD) projects as well as Custom or Engineered-to-Order (ETO) equipment orders. Partnering closely with Product Management, Engineering, Operations, and Executive Leadership, this role establishes a process to execute and oversee complex projects while ensuring cross-functional alignment from project approval through customer delivery. The Director of PMO provides direction to project managers and cross-functional teams, manages business-level priorities, and ensures projects remain on schedule, within scope, and on budget. This leader must be a proactive, systems-level thinker with exceptional communication skills and the ability to anticipate and navigate challenges across multiple complex programs.

Position Responsibilities:

• Develop and implement standardized project management processes tailored to engineer-to-order manufacturing, ensuring alignment between Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, Production Planning, Quality, and Customer teams
• Establish structured workflows for project kickoff, engineering release, drawing approval cycles, long-lead procurement, fabrication, assembly, testing, and customer acceptance
• Define project intake and scoping processes that incorporate feasibility assessments, technical requirements, material constraints, and manufacturing capacity considerations
• Continuously refine project execution practices to reduce rework, minimize delays caused by engineering changes, and improve cross-functional predictability

• Develop real-time dashboards that track critical ETO & NPD project indicators such as engineering release progress, procurement status for long-lead items, fabrication readiness, machine/line capacity, and shop-floor schedule adherence
• Implement portfolio dashboards that visualize backlog health, load vs. capacity, customer delivery commitments, and risk areas across concurrent custom projects
• Collaborate with Engineering, Supply Chain, Production, and Finance to consolidate data into a single source of truth for project performance, resource demand, and material readiness
• Ensure dashboards highlight bottlenecks—such as overdue drawings, supplier delays, part shortages, or manufacturing constraints—to support proactive decision-making.

• Manage, coach, and mentor project managers and cross-functional contributors to ensure consistent, high-quality project execution
• Foster a culture of accountability, proactive communication, and continuous improvement across the project organization

Position Qualifications

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience.
• 8–10+ years of progressive experience in project or program management, including significant leadership responsibility
• Proven success managing complex, cross-functional new product development efforts
• Strong command of project management methodologies and tools (e.g., Monday.com, Microsoft Project, PLM systems)
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence at all levels of the organization
• Highly persuasive, proactive, adaptable, and capable of leading through change.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills across technical and non-technical teams
• Ability to understand, adopt, and drive new technologies and processes.
• Thrives in a fast-paced environment; able to prioritize, manage multiple initiatives, and meet deadlines

Preferred:

• Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification or equivalent
• Experience establishing or leading a PMO or project governance function
• Direct experience in Engineered-to-Order products, specifically large business-to-business sales of capital equipment.

Who we are:

Nortek Data Center Cooling is a Madison Industries company.  Madison Industries is one of the largest and most successful privately h