Director, Project Management

Panera Bread•Newton, MA

7d•$177,243 - $212,691•Onsite

About The Position

The Director, Project Management leads the Operations Services project-management function and is accountable for successful delivery of strategic, cross-functional initiatives across Panera. This leader oversees five Managers of Project Management, establishes consistent governance and delivery standards, manages the enterprise project portfolio, and ensures initiatives are delivered on time, within budget, and to executive sponsor expectations.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree required
5+ years of progressive project management experience leading complex, cross-functional initiatives.
Demonstrated people-leadership experience with responsibility for project managers or complex portfolios.
Experience partnering with executive sponsors and senior leaders.
Exceptional project planning, organization, prioritization, and follow-through.
Strong business acumen, analytical thinking, judgment, and creative problem-solving.
Ability to influence without authority, navigate ambiguity, and build stakeholder alignment.
Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and executive presentation skills.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office and project-management tools.
Ability to travel based on business needs.

Nice To Haves

master's degree preferred
Restaurant, retail, hospitality, franchise, or multi-unit operations experience strongly preferred.
PMP or equivalent certification preferred.

Responsibilities

Own portfolio health and delivery performance.
Establish project intake, evaluation, prioritization, sequencing, approval, and portfolio review processes.
Partner with executive sponsors to define outcomes, success measures, sponsorship, and priorities.
Identify capacity constraints, dependencies, timing conflicts, and tradeoffs and recommend portfolio decisions.
Lead, coach, and develop five Managers of Project Management.
Assign projects based on complexity, capacity, priority, and capability.
Set expectations for outcomes, stakeholder experience, and execution quality.
Build project-management competencies, coaching routines, and career development.
Design and improve methodologies, stage gates, tools, templates, and minimum standards.
Establish requirements for charters, integrated plans, governance, risk, financial tracking, change control, deployment, and closeout.
Conduct portfolio and project health reviews and intervene when work is off track.
Serve as the primary project-management advisor to executive sponsors.
Lead steering committees, portfolio reviews, and critical decision forums.
Oversee budgets, forecasts, variances, vendor commitments, resources, and investment tradeoffs.
Ensure projects incorporate change management, field readiness, communications, training, and adoption.