Project Specialist

MR DIY International; Seri Kembangan; On-site; MYR 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

MR DIY International in Malaysia invites an experienced Strategic Projects Office (SPO) Assistant Manager to lead high-impact transformation programs across the enterprise, partnering with leadership to scope, structure, and deliver initiatives that accelerate growth and improve operations.

You will drive end-to-end project architecture, governance, and change management, building standardized frameworks and dashboards for executive review, while mentoring junior analysts and coordinating with

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field such as Economics, Finance, Supply Chain, or Analytics.
• 4–6 years of experience in PMO, consulting, or strategic transformation with cross-functional exposure.
• Experience in fast-paced or complex environments with strong project/operations/financial discipline.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Project Origination & Value Creation: scope and structure high-priority programs into actionable roadmaps.
• End-to-End Project Architecture & Governance: manage projects through chartering, milestone planning, risk management and BAU handoff.
• Root-Cause Operational Fixing: diagnose issues and design scalable fixes, pilot tests where needed.
• Cross-Functional Stakeholder Alignment: coordinate with Operations, Logistics, Procurement, Finance, IT, and Compliance.
• PMO Standard & Methodology Champion: implement governance, WBS, critical path, risk registers, and stage-gate reviews.
• Data-Driven Decision Support: build models to quantify trade-offs and track KPI drivers.
• Strategic Reporting & Executive Communication: create dashboards and business cases for leadership reviews.
• Team Mentorship & Workstream Leadership: guide junior analysts and manage workstreams.
• Drive & Change Management: foster execution culture and ownership across teams.

Skills

PMO leadership

Excel modelling

PowerPoint

Jira/Asana/Smartsheet

Data analysis

Strategic thinking

Stakeholder management

Change management

Financial modelling

Education

Bachelor's degree in Economics/Finance/Quantitative field

Tools

Jira

Asana

Monday.com

Smartsheet

Job description

MR DIY International brings high-quality, affordable products to customers worldwide, building on its proud beginnings in Malaysia. Over the years, MR DIY has grown into a trusted household name with a global footprint of more than 4,000 stores across Asia, Europe, and beyond—including key markets such as Turkey, Spain, Poland, Bangladesh, Thailand, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, India, and Cambodia.

With a dedicated team of over 20,000 employees, MR DIY International serves more than 80 million customers annually. The company is committed to delivering exceptional value and convenience, making everyday essentials and innovative products accessible to communities everywhere.

Responsibilities

Internally, this role is known as the Strategic Projects Office (SPO) Assistant Manager. In this role, you will play a critical role driving high impact transformational projects across the enterprise, not limited to any single function. This role goes beyond resolving operational bottlenecks; you will work alongside leadership to scope, structure, and execute strategic projects that accelerate growth, optimize operations, and sustain competitive advantage wherever in the business they create the most value.

Operating at the intersection of executive strategy and operational execution, you will lead cross functional projects end-to-end, build standardized governance frameworks, and ensure seamless transitions to Business-As-Us-ual (BAU) operational teams.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Project Origination & Value Creation: Work alongside leadership to scope, shape, and structure high-priority enterprise initiatives into actionable operational roadmaps that drive growth, cost efficiency, and competitive advantage.
• End-to-End Project Architecture & Governance: Lead mid-to-high impact operational transformation projects from initiation, charter creation, and milestone planning through execution, risk management, and formal BAU handoff.
• Root-Cause Operational Fixing & Framework Design: Diagnose complex operational breakdowns and serve as an internal task force lead during critical issues. Move past temporary firefighting by deploying containment actions, re-engineering SOPs, and building scalable frameworks. Where the fix is unproven, form a clear hypothesis and validate it on a small scale (e.g., a limited pilot) before recommending wider rollout.
• Cross-Functional Stakeholder Alignment: Partner with teams across Operations, Logistics, Procurement, Finance, IT, and Compliance (and beyond, as projects require) to align goals, resolve conflicting priorities, and drive cross-departmental accountability.
• PMO Standard & Methodology Champion: Implement rigorous project governance, including WBS, critical path, risk registers, milestone tracking, stage-gate reviews, and impact-vs-effort prioritization of competing initiatives to ensure project quality, cost efficiency, and on-time delivery.
• Data-Driven Decision Support: Build financial and operational models to quantify trade-offs; break down key metrics into their underlying drivers (e.g., what moves basket size, conversion, or cost-to-serve) to pinpoint where a project should focus. Maintain a strong command of the numbers behind every project to support fast, evidence-based decisions.
• Strategic Reporting & Executive Communication: Synthesize complex data and progress into executive dashboards, business cases, and strategic insights. Run a regular business review cadence to track leading and lagging KPIs, flag risks early (Green/Yellow/Red).
• Team Mentorship & Workstream Leadership: Directly guide and review the work of junior analysts or project team members, delegating workstreams and quality-checking deliverables, process maps, and analytical models.
• Drive & Change Management: Drive organizational change readiness and act as a change agent in establishing a structured execution culture while demonstrating strong personal ownership.

Requirements

• Education & Academic Background: Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Logistics, Industrial Engineering, Business Analytics, or a related quantitative field. Strong academic grounding in financial, economic/ quantitative analysis is highly preferred.
• Experience: 4 – 6 years of experience in corporate PMO, management consulting, strategic planning, strategic sourcing, or operational transformation, with strong exposure to cross functional operations where quantitative data directly drives project strategy and decision making.
• Industry Background: Experience in fast-paced or complex environments with strong project/operations/financial discipline (e.g., Corporate PMO, Retail/FMCG, Supply Chain/Logistics, Warehouse Operations, Strategic Procurement, FP&A/Corporate Finance).
• Framework Fluency: Working knowledge of structured problem-solving and execution frameworks (e.g., hypothesis-driven testing, Build-Measure-Learn, PDCA, pilot-to-scale rollouts) and the judgment to apply the right method to a project rather than relying on one by default.
• Business Acumen: Exceptional structured thinking, problem-solving, and process-mapping capabilities; proven track record of converting chaotic operations into structured playbooks.
• Data Sense & Analytical Acumen: Proven ability to work comfortably with numbers daily, breaking down operational and financial datasets to spot underlying issues, cost leakages, or growth opportunities. Advanced capability in business case modelling, unit economics analysis, ROI forecasting, and cost baseline estimation.
• Leadership & Stakeholder Management: Demonstrated capability to influence senior leadership and lead matrixed and cross-functional teams.
• Technical Proficiency: Advanced command of Microsoft Excel (financial/operational modelling) and PowerPoint (executive presentations), process mapping tools, and modern project management software (e.g., Jira, Asana, Monday.com, or Smartsheet).
• Communication & Presentation: Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English; proficiency in Mandarin is an advantage for regional stakeholder collaboration. Ability to distill complex analysis into compelling executive storylines.
• Core Attributes: High resilience, proactive, result-oriented, and capable of managing high ambiguity with a strong execution drive, and being self-directed enough to run projects end-to end while knowing when to bring the PMO Head in for guidance and decision making.

Why Join Us/ What’s in it for You?

• High Executive Visibility: Work directly with leadership to influence and execute core enterprise strategies.
• High-Impact Ownership: Shape, transform, and optimize large-scale operations across a market-leading retail brand.