Project Manager for IPCEI SENSE and THINK

NXP, and more specially the BL Automotive Embedded Systems (AES), engages in public funded cooperation projects to strengthen our research and development as well as innovation activities in Europe. In Romania, we participate in the EU IPCEI (Important Projects of Common European Interest) program on microelectronics and telecommunication with a project within our IPCEI SENSE and THINK program.

As project manager for the IPCEI SENSE and THINK projects you are responsible for the management of the project, so that we achieve the project goals and fulfil our funding contract with the national authorities and European Commission while utilizing the contractual potential. It is your responsibility to ensure the proper execution of the NXP committed activities and results in accordance with contractual obligations and NXP business processes.

This role has an internally and an externally facing side, as you are the interface between the expert research and development teams inside NXP, and the IPCEI project partners and authorities.

In the internally facing role you as the project manager are responsible for:

• Executing the project activities with respect to the internal target project workplan.
• Meticulously tracking of deviations from internal project workplan towards the contractual project workplan and creation of transparent visualizations and analyses for the IPCEI coreteam and steering board.
• Execution planning and forecasting across all project cost categories is part of your key responsibilities as well as the review and audit proof documentation of the actual realized costs.
• Alignment with the internal research and development teams on the project progress and results.
• Advice to technical decision-makers and group leaders on how to utilize the IPCEI program optimally while complying with subsidy rules.
• Preparation and presentation of the NXP project deliverables.
• Monitoring and aligning of the actual project deliverables with regard to the promised final result to the project authorities.
• Embedding of the cooperative project processes into the NXP business processes.

Interfacing with the IPCEI SENSE and THINK execution teams, IPCEI SENSE and THINK coreteams, AES development and engineering program managers, IPCEI Germany country program team. You are responsible for reporting IPCEI SENSE and THINK RO progress with respect to costs, deliverable, and spillover KPI into these groups.

In the externally facing role you as the project manager are responsible for:

• Representing NXP and its work to the project partners inside NXP’s cooperative innovation network and ecosystem comprising of industry partners, research organizations, and universities.
• Interacting with the IPCEI project partners on the overall project steering, alignment, and reporting, the general work plan implementation, NXP’s contributions, and present the NXP results at the project end.
• Representation of NXP and its work and the IPCEI project as well as interim and final progress reports to the Romanian national authorities and the European Commission and justification of deviations.
• Driving change requests towards the authorities on need basis and consulting the coreteam and steering board on its risks, implications, and consequences to the larger AES and NXP IPCEI goals.

In this role you will be interacting with different disciplines like technical leaders, expert engineers, project support office, finance, specialist department leads, and peer project and program managers inside NXP as well as from the project partners. Your NXP peer project managers are a young professional and dynamic team.

Required skills and experiences:

• Excellent English oral and written communication and presentation skills
• Romanian native language is further a requirement to manage the national contract commitments and reporting.
• Project management experience.
• Courage to speak up and propose ideas in a high paced, high-pressure environment.
• Ideally IPCEI and or Romanian national and European funding project experience
• Experience in the field of automotive processing and knowledge on related technology drivers, as well as on EU and Romanian strategic research agenda priorities.
• Very structured, diligent, and organized work style to counter the incredible complexity of managing IPCEI with its national and European rules inside the global NXP business processes,
• Capability to abstract impacts three steps ahead.
• Quick learner and learning mindset. IPCEI has its own rules, and we need to adapt on the spot.
• Pro-active behavior on detecting and addressing project issues or risks.
• Strong organizational skills, calm under pressure, attention to detail at any time.
• Analytical mind and capability to develop your own reports.
• Excellent Excel skills. Ideally experience with PowerBI
• Excellent memory and creativity of funding and business rules to identify different, and sometimes contradicting rules and proposal of solutions.
• Skilled in cloud based collaborative working based on Microsoft tools like Sharepoint, Teams, PowerBI, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Onenote etc.
• Able to work within a decentralized team with diverse cultural backgrounds of your team members, stakeholders, and management.

In this role you will be reporting dotted line to the subsidy manager of SENSE and THINK projects at NXP EU level.

Please note: The successful candidate may/will be responsible for security related tasks. The assignment may/will be in scope of security certifications, therefore a conscious and reliable way of working is necessary.