Program Manager

Caterpillar•Mossville, IL

6d•Onsite

About The Position

The Program Manager will lead a high-visibility, LPSD capacity expansion initiative that is critical to achieving strategic business objectives. This role is responsible for driving transformational change across a complex, matrixed organization while ensuring disciplined program governance, risk management, stakeholder alignment, and execution excellence. The successful candidate will serve as a program leader coordinating across business, operations, engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, finance, and leadership teams to ensure the program achieves committed outcomes related to capacity, cost, quality, schedule, and operational readiness. This role requires a strategic leader who can influence without authority, navigate ambiguity, escalate issues proactively, and drive accountability across multiple workstreams and stakeholder groups.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, Business, Project Management, or related field.
Extensive knowledge of data gathering and analysis tools, techniques, and processes; ability to collect and synthesize data from a variety of stakeholders and sources in an objective manner to reach a conclusion, goal, or judgment.
Knowledge of the data-driven decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to gather and analyze data to make organizational decisions that align with strategic business objectives and goals.
Knowledge of effective influencing tactics and strategies; ability to impact decisions within and outside own organization.
Extensive knowledge of the importance of collaboration among team members and the ability to enroll stakeholders in communicating and coordinating activities to support the organization's vision and strategies.
Extensive understanding of the importance of inter-team collaboration in breaking down silos and achieving business results; ability to lead employees from various functions to communicate, coordinate work across divisions, and collaborate in solving problems as one team.
Extensive knowledge of the policies and techniques to manage a set of related projects within a program; ability to plan, organize, monitor, and control the set of projects, ensuring efficient utilization of technical and administrative resources to achieve program objectives.

Nice To Haves

PMP, PgMP, Lean, Six Sigma, or equivalent certification.
Experience leading manufacturing, operations, supply chain, or capacity expansion initiatives.
Experience managing multi-million-dollar capital or operational investment programs.
Previous exposure to executive steering committees and senior leadership governance forums.
Experience implementing organizational change management methodologies.

Responsibilities

Lead planning, execution, and delivery of multiple capacity expansion projects from concept through operational deployment.
Establish and maintain integrated project plans, milestones, dependencies, and critical-path activities.
Ensure alignment between strategic business objectives and program execution activities.
Coordinate multiple interconnected workstreams to achieve committed program outcomes.
Establish and maintain robust program governance processes, decision forums, and executive reporting mechanisms.
Develop and manage program scorecards, KPIs, risk registers, issue logs, and action tracking tools.
Facilitate governance reviews and executive steering committee meetings.
Drive accountability for commitments, decisions, and corrective actions.
Identify, assess, and mitigate program risks, constraints, and execution gaps.
Proactively escalate critical issues and barriers to leadership with recommended mitigation plans.
Ensure cross-functional teams understand impacts, dependencies, and recovery actions.
Monitor organizational readiness and address emerging threats to program success.
Engage senior leaders, sponsors, and functional stakeholders to ensure alignment and commitment.
Build strong relationships across a highly matrixed organization.
Influence decision-making through data-driven recommendations and business case development.
Communicate program status, risks, achievements, and required actions to leadership teams.
Drive transformational change required to achieve future-state operating models and capacity targets.
Ensure processes, organizational structures, and operating practices evolve to support strategic objectives.
Support change management activities, stakeholder engagement plans, and adoption strategies.
Promote a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and execution discipline.
Coordinate resource planning across functional teams and workstreams.
Evaluate capacity constraints and identify solutions to support program objectives.
Collaborate with leadership to resolve resource gaps and competing priorities.
Ensure workforce, facility, equipment, and supplier readiness align with program timelines.
Track program performance against cost, quality, schedule, capacity, and operational performance metrics.
Deliver concise executive-level reporting and actionable insights.
Leverage data to identify trends, risks, and improvement opportunities.
Drive corrective actions when performance deviates from plan.