INNOVATION PROGRAM MANAGER

United State Cold Storage Inc / USCS•Camden, NJ

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Innovation Program Manager is responsible for driving both innovation initiatives and administrative transformation efforts across warehouse and support functions. In addition to managing pilots and the enterprise innovation pipeline, this role leads change initiatives within administrative and customer-facing workflows—leveraging new technologies and process redesign to improve efficiency, accuracy, and customer experience. This role is well suited for an individual who operates comfortably between operations, technology, and change management. The Program Manager will extend existing work in areas such as driver check-in/check-out and apply similar transformation principles to broader warehouse administrative functions and customer service processes. The position is highly cross-functional, focused on creating structure, prioritization, and momentum across both innovation pilots and operationally focused transformation initiatives.

Requirements

3–7 years of experience in program management, operations transformation, innovation, PMO, or related fields.
Demonstrated experience leading change initiatives in operational or administrative environments.
Strong understanding of process improvement, workflow design, and technology-enabled transformation.
Ability to impose structure on ambiguous problems and drive work from concept through execution.
Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
Comfort working with frontline operations, customer service teams, and technical partners.

Nice To Haves

Experience with pilot design, experimentation, or operational rollouts preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead change initiatives within warehouse administrative and customer service functions, including but not limited to: Driver check-in/check-out and yard-facing processes (ie Vector), Customer service workflows (order status, exception handling, communication touchpoints), Warehouse administrative activities (documentation, billing triggers, data capture, reporting)
Identify and quantify pain points across administrative processes, partnering with Operations, Customer Service, IT, and CI/IE teams.
Leverage emerging technologies (automation, workflow tools, AI-enabled solutions, self-service platforms) to simplify and standardize administrative work.
Design future-state processes, define change impacts, and support rollout planning and adoption.
Ensure solutions balance operational efficiency, employee experience, and customer experience.
Manage the end-to-end innovation intake process, including problem definition, value hypothesis, feasibility assessment, and strategic alignment.
Facilitate intake sessions with Engineering, IT, Product, Operations, Customer Service, and CI/IE teams.
Maintain a centralized inventory of all active, pending, and historical innovation and transformation initiatives.
Support building and operating the enterprise stage-gate model (Explore → Assess → Pilot → Scale → Sustain).
Prepare materials, coordinate gate reviews, document outcomes, and ensure entry/exit criteria are met.
Distinguish between exploratory innovation pilots and operational transformation initiatives while maintaining consistent governance rigor.
Design and manage structured pilots and transformation initiatives with defined success metrics, scope, and evaluation plans.
Coordinate cross-functional teams, schedules, blocker removal, and documentation.
Facilitate retrospectives and scale / standardize / sunset recommendations.
Design and facilitate workshops focused on administrative simplification, customer experience improvement, and technology-enabled change.
Partner with Engineering, Data, IT, and Operations to identify high-value themes (automation, AI, workflow digitization, quality, service reliability).
Translate workshop outputs into actionable pilots, transformation projects, or roadmap items.
Act as a central connector across Operations, Customer Service, IT, Engineering, Data, CI/IE, and Business stakeholders.
Facilitate working groups and alignment sessions between technical teams and frontline administrative users.