Senior Project Manager

Ornua Co-operative Limited; Leek; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 70,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus scheme

Healthcare

Matched pension scheme

Hybrid working

Global opportunities

Discounted company shop

Subsidised staff canteen

Onsite physio

Job summary

Ornua, the Irish dairy giant, seeks a Senior Project Manager to drive the UK Innovation and NPD portfolio across cross-functional teams. You will steward project scopes, milestones and strategic alignment, delivering measurable business value in a fast-paced FMCG environment.

You will influence senior stakeholders across functions and geographies, ensure disciplined execution, and champion best-in-class project management practices to enable scalable growth.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in project management, with experience in a senior or leadership role.
• Proven experience in delivering complex projects and managing resources, budgets, and timelines.
• Strong commercial awareness – understands P&Ls, customer relationships and brands.
• Experience in FMCG/Food – ideally both private label and brand.

Responsibilities

• Own the UK Innovation and NPD project portfolio as senior portfolio lead, prioritising and allocating resources for maximum commercial return.
• Define robust project scope, success criteria, and milestones with senior stakeholders.
• Translate strategic priorities into detailed, actionable project plans with clear progress visibility.
• Identify, assess and manage project risks and dependencies, escalating with clear recommendations.
• Establish and communicate project KPIs and dashboards, including financial and budget tracking.

Job description

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Reports to: Head of Product Development and Commercialisation

Salary: Between £60,000 and £70,000 depending on experience

Hours: 36.25 hours per week

Benefits: Bonus scheme, Healthcare, Matched pension scheme, Hybrid working, Global opportunities, Discounted company shop, Subsidised staff canteen, Onsite physio and much more

Ornua (meaning “new gold”) is Ireland’s largest exporter of Irish dairy products, proudly bringing the unique taste of Irish dairy to the world for over 55 years.

Are you an experienced and passionate Project Manager looking for the challenge of taking a mission driven organisation to its next level of success? Are you a natural problem solver with strong communication and leadership skills?

Ornua is actively seeking a Senior Project Manager to join our Commercial department as we continue our growth trajectory.

As our Senior Project Manager, you will play a critical role in strengthening the innovation capability of Ornua Foods UK & Europe by leading the cultural, behavioral and process change required to deliver disciplined, commercially-focused and scalable project execution.

The role provides strategic leadership across high-impact private label and branded EPD/NPD projects, including product and packaging change, ensuring cross-functional teams are aligned behind clear priorities, robust decision-making and delivery against agreed commercial, customer and operational outcomes.

Operating with credibility at senior level, the role influences across functions and geographies, translating strategic objectives into structured project plans that create clarity, pace, accountability and sustainable growth.

Success in the role requires strong ownership, commercial awareness and expertise in managing complexity, ambiguity and competing priorities. It champions the Stage & Gate process, embeds best-in-class project management behaviours, and role models the competencies required to seek and embrace new ideas, make things happen, act with integrity and achieve great things together.

Why Ornua?

• Ornua operates as a commercial organisation from 10 business units worldwide, including 12 production facilities located in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa.
• The commercial organisation is responsible for the marketing and sales of Ornua’s consumer brands including Ireland’s most successful food export: Kerrygold.
• It also manages the procurement of Irish and non-Irish dairy products, the sale of dairy ingredients to food manufacturing and foodservice customers globally, and the implementation of de-risking and trading strategies to manage market volatility.
• Our co-operative ethos lies at the heart of how we do business as a purpose and values-led organisation, creating value for Irish dairy farming families.
• Our Values lie at the core of everything we do. Our five values encourage us to Seek and Embrace New Ideas, Make It Happen, Be Our True Selves, Show You Care, and Achieve Great Things Together.
• Dynamic Working policy in place which facilitates flexible hours and hybrid working
• We invest in our people and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
• Career Progression including Global Mobility opportunities.
• Comprehensive Benefits with regional specific offerings.

Why This Role Is Valuable:

• Own the UK Innovation and NPD project portfolio as the senior portfolio lead, providing strategic oversight of prioritisation, resource allocation, investment requirements, risks and expected commercial returns, while ensuring alignment to Ornua’s strategic priorities and deployment of resources against the highest-value opportunities.
• Challenge constructively where processes, RACIs or commitments are not being followed and building confidence in new ways of working across the business.
• Define robust project scope, success criteria, commercial assumptions, resource requirements and critical milestones in collaboration with senior stakeholders, ensuring projects are set up to deliver measurable value.
• Translate strategic priorities into detailed, actionable project plans, managing demanding timelines while maintaining clear visibility of progress, trade-offs, risks and required decisions.
• Identify, assess and manage project dependencies, risks and issues, escalating with clear recommendations and enabling timely decision-making through high-quality analysis and judgement.
• Establish and communicate project KPI/success metrics and own the master Project Tracker dashboards. These will include financial and commercial metrics, resource & budget tracking and recommendations for where improvements can be made.
• Influence and advise internal and external senior stakeholders (UK SLT team & global senior colleagues, key customers eg Tesco, Sainsburys etc) are up to date with project status and performance. Provide regular monthly updates into UK SLT team. Able to hold your own in challenging situations and clearly articulate risks and opportunities to unlock quality decision making.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement leading transformation of the company's innovation operating mode by embedding learning from post-launch reviews, strengthening tools and methodologies, and encouraging teams to apply a growth mindset to future project delivery.
• Contribute as a senior member of the Innovation and wider Commercial team, helping to build capability, collaboration and engagement across the business.
• Develop project management capability within the team by providing structured coaching, guidance and practical support to a direct report who is building foundational project management experience, enabling them to grow confidence, ownership and competence in core project management disciplines

What You Bring To The Role:

• Extensive experience in project management, with experience in a senior or leadership role.
• Proven experience in all the areas above, and clear demonstration not just of implementing existing processes, but of driving transformational change in people and innovation processes to deliver step change growth.
• Highly experienced in delivering complex projects and managing resource, budget, infrastructural, capacity and capability and decision-making constraints.
• Sound commercial awareness – understands P&L’s, customer relationships and brands and highly experienced in stakeholder management and influencing
• Experience in FMCG/Food – ideally both private label and brand

Our interview process is designed to be thorough yet supportive. This process includes a first stage via Teams to allow us to get to know you better and to understand your skills and experiences and, if successful, a second stage face-to-face interview that will build upon the first stage and give you the opportunity to get a feel for Ornua and the environment in which you will be working.

Ornua has ambitious growth plans and we’re building a team to help enable and accelerate that growth. We are looking for people who share our values, are curious, forward-looking, take ownership and work together to build a future for themselves and Ornua.

Ornua values diversity and inclusion and welcomes applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds. We also strongly encourage women and other underrepresented groups in the manufacturing industry to apply. Your unique perspectives and experiences are highly valued and will be instrumental in driving our company’s continued success. Join us in shaping a more innovative, inclusive, and sustainable future.

Ornua is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible workplace. We will make every effort to provide for any reasonable accessibility needs you may have during your employment with us. If you require accommodations at any stage of the recruitment process or in your role, please let us know — we’re here to support you.