About the Role

The Innovation Services Group (ISG) is looking for an organized, creative and disciplined program management professional. This person will serve as the Program Management czar, helping ISG develop, maintain, and improve a PMO structure to support company growth. The Innovation Program Director will help address wicked problems, using systems thinking and cross-discipline resources, to define and execute solutions that leverage new technology, business models and Xinova’s network of innovators.

The ideal candidate will draw a diverse background and industry experiences to deliver on innovation projects in fields as far ranging as agriculture, city infrastructure, robotics, medical device, artificial intelligence and energy. As the Innovation Program Director, this role will lead the development of Xinova’sglobal network of program and project managers.  By leveraging network effects and advanced platform technologies developed by Xinova, the Innovation Program Director will create a new model of on-demand project management capabilities to support world class R&D projects.

The Innovation Program Director will successfully manage a broad range of projects, technologies, clients, and resource contributors.  Successful candidates have experience managing large and complex initiatives over a wide range of project types and industries.

Why Xinova? Just like our company’s mission and the name of the group, you have a chance to be creative, innovative, and open minded as you create new systems and improve current ones to keep ISG on track, on budget, and on time, while solving fundamental challenges for our customers. You will work with and lead a team of project managers, technical experts, and innovators to inspire them to think outside the box.

Responsibilities:

• Develop, scale and manage all aspects of our PMO to accommodate our growth plan
• Drive and build teams to develop and implement a high performing business unit that meets and exceeds ambitious goals
• Manage contract negotiations with relevant 3rd party relationships
• Analyze projects to identify trends and problems, work with internal teams to address areas of opportunity
• Set, monitor, improve, control and adapt requested KPIs on a quarterly basis together with the relevant teams
• Organize release efforts, coordinating with product management on release dates
• Prepare and manage project schedules and resources from project kickoff through rollout
• Create streamlined and standardized processes that enable consistent execution and allow for continuous improvement
• Effectively manage project scope by ensuring any changes to scope are documented and approved by project change control
• Lead teams spanning product management, technology services, and account management

Skills and Requirements

• Experience delivering results within complex ecosystems or global market networks
• Build strong processes from scratch
• Process and detail-oriented, while flexible to experimentation and iteration
• Analytical with an ability to utilize data to make sound business decisions
• Decisive with the ability to execute business plans with speed and precision
• Flexible and adaptable to the ever-changing needs of the Innovation Services team, and demonstrate a capacity to organize and prioritize your own workload
• Strong knowledge of Project management software, Excel and other Microsoft applications
• Proven leadership capabilities with demonstrated experience leading multiple managers and remote teams, preferably leveraging networks or within complex ecosystems
• 10-15 years of demonstrated track record of success in relevant industries

About Us:

Xinova's open innovation network of 10,000+ inventors creates powerful synergies between inventor and client with a uniquely iterative, feedback-driven processes that make the results more efficient and effective by identifying technical and commercial feasibility along the way. We partner with companies from a variety of industries, ranging from leading multinational food-and-beverage and credit card companies to startups and regional Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to develop, refine and commercialize winning solutions that are valuable, scalable and practical to implement.