Senior Innovation Technical Project Manager

 

Senior Innovation Technical Project Manager (iTPM)

Technology Incubation Group | Needham, MA

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Where New Products Begin

Before a product gets a name, a launch date, or a development budget, it has to survive the hardest phase of all: early-stage innovation. The ideas are ambitious, the constraints are real, and the path forward is rarely obvious. This is exactly where the Innovation Technical Project Manager operates — and it's one of the most consequential roles in SharkNinja's product organization.

As iTPM, you'll sit at the center of the Technology Incubation Group, driving early-stage programs from initial vision through prototype — the phase where the most important decisions get made and the most value gets created or destroyed. This is not a coordination role. It's a senior leadership position with real accountability, real authority, and direct access to the most senior levels of the business.

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What You'll Own

You're the single accountable owner of your programs from Vision through prototype handoff to the NPD group. That means you define what's being built, why it matters commercially, and hold a global cross-functional organization to schedule and cost from day one.

In practice, that looks like:

• Building and maintaining integrated master program schedules across all workstreams — mechanical, electrical, firmware, industrial design, and commercial readiness
• Driving alignment on product direction across engineering, design, commercial, finance, and supply chain teams globally
• Leading structured milestone reviews at Vision, V0, P1, and P2 — preparing materials, facilitating decisions, and ensuring clear documented outcomes
• Owning the risk register from day one: identifying, escalating, and resolving critical path risks before they hit cost or timeline
• Serving as the primary interface between the Innovation TPM team and the NPD PMO, enabling clean, structured handoffs at P2
• Delivering sharp, accurate program updates to executive leadership — bringing clarity and structure to high-pressure, ambiguous situations
• Contributing to the continuous improvement of SharkNinja's early-stage iTPM playbook

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What You Bring

You have an engineering background and the commercial instincts to match. You can interrogate a mechanical design, read a programme schedule, and challenge a strategic decision — all in the same morning. You're at your best when the problem is unstructured and the stakes are high.

Required:

• Engineering background with 5+ years in a TPM, PM, or senior engineering project management role
• Demonstrated experience managing programs across the full product lifecycle, ideally including early-stage consumer products or electronics
• Proven ability to run integrated schedules across multiple engineering workstreams simultaneously
• Track record of influencing and presenting to senior and executive stakeholders
• Solid understanding of manufacturing processes, tooling, and DFM constraints — consumer electronics and plastics experience strongly preferred
• Comfortable creating structure and driving alignment in ambiguous, fast-moving environments

Nice to Have:

• Experience in pre-P2 / early-stage innovation or concept development environments
• Familiarity with stage-gate processes in a product-led consumer goods company
• PMP, PRINCE2, or equivalent certification
• Budget management and P&L literacy at the program level
• Global team exposure across US, UK, and China
• SolidWorks or Creo proficiency — ability to read and interrogate engineering design data

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Who Thrives in This Role

The people who succeed here are technically credible and commercially sharp, confident enough to challenge direction at the most senior levels, and collaborative enough to build trust quickly across engineering, design, and business teams. They bring discipline to ambiguity without slowing things down, and they're genuinely excited by the early-stage work that most organizations find hardest to manage well.

If that sounds like you, we'd like to talk.