PRODUCT DESIGN & ENGINEERING PROJECT MANAGER

Hello, I’m Winston. I’m the Co-Founder and Head of Product Design & Engineering at Sleeping Duck and I’m looking for someone who is extremely excited and passionate about driving and motivating a team to complete their best work. This role will assist me in managing our Product Design and Research and Development projects.
Our mission is to improve lives by using scientific and customer insights to address the challenges we face in achieving the best possible nights sleep. We design and engineer products and services that deliver meaningful, positive impact towards this goal. This requires us to invest deeply in understanding the factors that influence sleep quality and comfort throughout the night as well as how our interventions directly affect these factors.

In this role you need to be able to

• Take the time to understand what the leaders of the business are trying to achieve and assist in distilling this into clear projects and goals.
• Motivate and excite the teams to work on the project. Ensure clear communication to all involved about where we are with projects, what needs to be done and what we need help with.
• Have a can do attitude and always ask how you can support and service the team

A lot of the time, particularly when we are in the inception of a new product, requirements will change quickly. We may even for a while be figuring out what question to ask or what problem we need to solve. We might want a very specific thing which is hard to find. We may only want to make a small quantity of items when suppliers want to make 10s of thousands. There are multiple projects on the go. What I need is someone who can stick through all of this, stay positive, find solutions, inspire the team and keep the momentum.
You’ll thrive in this role if you keep an open mind and believe what we are doing is important and will improve our customers’ lives. If you are a person who loves working on hard problems and you love working with and inspiring people, this job is for you.

WHAT THE ROLE LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE

You’ll be working directly with me and my Product Design team. We are a small team, consisting of product designers, engineers, product managers and external consultants.

In this role you will:

• Work with me to develop projects and their requirements. Projects areas will include R&D, Sourcing, Product Design, Product Engineering, Product/ Material Testing, and Production Implementation.
• As we brainstorm, research and understand more about the projects, our ambitions will shift, be in step with me to understand this very clearly and adjust the project parameters accordingly.
• Breakdown project into understandable milestones/subgoals to ensure teams are working on the right goals at the right time. This is especially important when there are multiple simultaneous projects
• Determine the project resourcing and determine who is responsible for the tasks at hand.
• Work closely with all members of the project team to ensure they have what they need to complete their work.
• Build team morale through strong rapport, clear communication, and shared purpose.
• Maintain project momentum by checking in regularly, identifying blockers, and helping to resolve them.
• Regularly check in with me and keep me well-informed about the state of the project
• Be willing to put your hand up and say “Yes!” to getting the job done. When I am pushing for a difficult goal, don’t tell me it can’t be done, ask me how we can solve the problem at hand.
• This role will require late night meetings and the ability to fly overseas as and when required.

At the start, you will need to spend time sitting with me to understand what I’m trying to achieve. You will need to spend time across the different teams in the business to understand how they work and what they are working on.
From there you will get across all the projects we are currently working on which are at different stages. I will then get you started on a few key projects and initially I will work with you every step of the way to ensure that we are locked and synced on how I want things to run.
When you are fully comfortable in the role, you will be driving multiple projects with multiple designers and engineers and will be able to provide me with the information and context I need to drive the strategy of the business.
Success will be a precise distillation of goals and a team that is motivated and clear on what they need to do.

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE FOR THIS ROLE

Ideally, you:

• Have worked as an engineer or industrial designer
• Have worked in a project management capacity
• Have a demonstrated ability to work with and drive teams
• Ideally worked in R&D or research based projects
• Have worked with overseas factories to develop products

I’m less concerned with the amount of work years and more interested about your approach and attitude. I am after the absolute best outcome for the customer and the product so you need to be able to work in an environment where things will change until we get it right.

In this role you need to be able to

• Take the time to understand what the leaders of the business are trying to achieve and assist in distilling this into clear projects and goals.
• Motivate and excite the teams to work on the project. Ensure clear communication to all involved about where we are with projects, what needs to be done and what we need help with.
• Have a can do attitude and always ask how you can support and service the tea