Project Manager - Product and Portfolio Innovation - 6-18 Month Contract

Flora Food Group•Hackensack, NJ

7h•Hybrid

About The Position

This role exists to build and embed a fit-for-purpose PMO capability for the North America (NA) business, enabling disciplined execution of innovation and portfolio priorities at pace and with quality. As Flora Food Group continues to scale consumer-led innovation across regions, the NA business requires stronger orchestration across Marketing, R&D, Supply Chain, Finance and Operations. The Senior PMO Manager acts as a foundational builder of this capability: setting up robust ways of working, driving executional discipline, and ensuring projects land on time, in full, and with clear accountability. This role is critical to reducing execution risk, improving speed-to-market, and freeing up functional leaders to focus on content and decision-making rather than coordination.

Requirements

8–12+ years experience in project, program, or PMO roles within FMCG / CPG or similarly complex environments
Experience acting as owner of PMO data quality, reporting cadence, and execution dashboards in enterprise environments.
Proven experience setting up or scaling PMO / project management structures.
Hands-on experience managing end-to-end innovation, transformation, or portfolio initiatives.
Strong understanding of stage-gate models, innovation lifecycles, and launch readiness.
Experience in influencing senior stakeholders without direct authority.

Nice To Haves

PMP, PRINCE2, Agile / SAFe certification

Responsibilities

Establish a N. America PMO operating model aligned to global P&P / PMO standards, while tailored to local business realities.
Bring consistency, transparency and rigor to how innovation and portfolio initiatives are planned, governed and delivered, and act as the single point of truth for execution status, risks and delivery confidence across the NA innovation and portfolio agenda.
Act as the executional backbone for priority initiatives, ensuring cross-functional teams deliver against clear timelines, milestones and decision gates.
Improve delivery confidence, resource visibility and decision quality across the NA portfolio.
Design and implement a North America PMO framework, as a first step to establishing global Product & Portfolio Management Office standards.
Embed common ways of working across innovation and portfolio initiatives, including timelines, milestones, gatekeeping and execution tracking.
Optimise governance cadences (weekly drumbeats, monthly gate reviews, escalation forums) with clear roles, inputs and outputs.
Ensure high-quality data, discipline and follow-through in portfolio & project management systems.
Own the planning and orchestration of priority innovation and portfolio initiatives from early-stage (G0) through to post-launch (G5). In time this will also include Value Creation / Savings initiatives.
Build integrated project timelines based on briefs, commercial trade windows and lead times.
Define critical paths, dependencies and resource requirements across functions and projects.
Proactively surface risks, delays, and trade-offs; drive mitigation and escalation at the right level.
Lead structured weekly project drumbeats, ensuring clear actions, owners, and accountability.
Act as the central coordination point across Marketing, R&D, Supply Chain (including P&I and T&I teams), Quality, Finance, Procurement and Operations.
Hold teams accountable for inputs and deliverables (e.g., technical briefs, business cases, system data, readiness milestones).
Support preparation of governance forums and senior leadership updates with clear, decision-ready materials.
Drive continuous improvement of execution practices, lead times, and delivery performance.
Help build the NA PMO / Activity Management capability over time, including a team, templates, playbooks, and best practices, as the NA hub scales.
Act as a role model for execution discipline, pragmatic problem-solving, and collaborative leadership.