Project Manager

Johnson Outdoors; Durban; On-site; ZAR 200 000 - 300 000; Full time

Job summary

A leading outdoor technology company seeks a Project Manager for their Durban site. The successful candidate will organize and manage product design and development, working closely with marketing and engineering to ensure project success. Qualifications include a bachelor’s degree in mechanical or electrical engineering and at least 2 years of relevant experience. Excellent communication and project management skills are essential for driving the product development process.

Qualifications

• Minimum 2 years of experience in engineering or project management.
• Broad technical knowledge related to core competency technologies.
• Ability to manage projects and motivate technical professionals.

Responsibilities

• Organizes, tracks, and champions product design and development.
• Communicates with project stakeholders and prepares status reports.
• Facilitates activities to complete project milestones and maintains documentation.

Skills

Project management

Effective communication

Problem troubleshooting

Team collaboration

Time management

Education

Bachelor's degree in mechanical or electrical engineering

Job description

About the Role:

Endless Summer Technologies, a subsidiary to Johnson Outdoors requires a Project Manager to be based at their Durban site. Under general direction of department leadership and senior level program managers, organizes, tracks and champions the design and development of assigned products. Manages multiple simple to moderately complex projects to ensure that new products are completed to established specification, scheduling, and product cost requirements.

What you will be doing:

• Reviews project plan and proposals and works with management to develop project objectives. Identifies project responsibilities by determining the phases and elements of the project.
• Determines project schedule and timelines by studying the project plan and specifications, calculating time requirements and sequencing project elements.
• Partners with marketing to determine requirements for a new product or product platform.
• Collaborates with engineering management to allocate technical resources for a project.
• Controls and monitors project plans, reviews any design, specifications, plan, and schedule changes and recommends actions to improve project outcomes. Monitors product costs and capital spending. Proposes and pursues solutions if either goes over budget.
• Advocates for the design team, identifies and clears potential roadblocks.
• Identifies manufacturing/operations and purchasing issues that require resolution to successfully complete a project and drive the decision process.
• Facilitates activities within the company in support of completing project milestones. Tracks project milestones and deliverables, and effectively maintains project documentation.
• Communicates with project stakeholders on an ongoing basis. Prepares project status reports by collecting, analyzing, and summarizing information and trends and recommends actions as needed to improve outcomes.
• Establishes design qualification, field testing, and production testing plans and success criteria.
• Coordinates with production/operations to successfully transfer a new product to production.
• Conducts training classes for customer service personnel for new products. Performs other duties as assigned.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Typically requires a bachelor’s degree in mechanical, electrical engineering or equivalent.
• Typically requires a minimum of 2 years of experience in engineering related to design and/or project management.
• Broad technical knowledge and design experience relating to the core competency technologies used in similar product lines (as defined by hiring business unit).
• Skills and ability to effectively give direction and guidance and work well within the cooperative culture of the organization.
• Ability to take ownership of a project and be able to organize and manage it while motivating technical professionals to produce quality designs on schedule. Ability to conform to shifting priorities, requirements, and timelines.
• Project management skills and experience that demonstrates the candidate can effectively establish and accomplish product development objectives.
• Proactive management and problem troubleshooting techniques.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills to effectively develop project documents and work with cross functional teams throughout the organization. Able to articulate a complete product development process from ideation to production.