Senior Manager, Project Management - New Product Launch

Title: Senior Manager, Project Management - New Product Launch Location: New York Metropolitan - Hybrid

What You’ll Do

The Senior Manager, Project Management - New Product Launch is responsible for leading enterprise commercialization governance and cross-functional orchestration for new product launches from concept through Commercialization Readiness.

This role serves as the central integrator across Product & Innovation, Packaging Engineering, Regulatory, Creative, Marketing, Supply Chain, Procurement, and regional market teams to ensure launches progress with clear alignment, visibility, accountability, and decision-making.

This role owns integrated commercialization timelines, milestone governance, stage gate management, portfolio visibility, and cross-functional coordination across a dynamic global launch pipeline. The Manager plays a critical role in balancing speed, complexity, and executional rigor while supporting launches across diverse international markets with varying regulatory, operational, localization, and supply chain requirements.

The role partners closely with Supply Planning Launch Specialists, who assume operational commercialization ownership following the Commercialization Readiness Gate. Together, these functions ensure a seamless transition from innovation development into operational execution, launch readiness, and stabilization.

This position reports to the Director of Launch Project Management and is a key contributor to continuously evolving Sol de Janeiro’s commercialization capabilities, governance processes, and cross-functional ways of working

What You’ll Be Working On

These duties may be reviewed and modified from time to time based on mutual needs.

Commercialization Governance & Timeline Management

• Own and maintain integrated cross-functional commercialization timelines for multiple global product launches simultaneously.
• Lead commercialization governance processes and stage gate management from concept through Commercialization Readiness.
• Ensure launch timelines accurately reflect dependencies across Product Development, Packaging Engineering, Artwork, Regulatory, Supply Chain, Procurement, Quality, and regional market requirements.
• Drive timeline integrity through proactive milestone tracking, issue identification, stakeholder accountability, and decision management.
• Serve as the primary owner of launch communication cadence and portfolio visibility to key business stakeholders.
• Maintain enterprise visibility to launch status, critical path activities, risks, dependencies, and key business decisions.

Commercialization & Decision Management

• Own and facilitate key commercialization governance forums, ensuring appropriate stakeholder participation, decision-making, accountability, and follow-through.
• Lead strategic launch meetings and cross-functional working sessions to drive alignment on priorities, risks, critical path activities, and launch readiness.
• Drive timely resolution of cross-functional issues by identifying required decisions, documenting outcomes, assigning actions, and escalating unresolved risks when appropriate.
• Manage commercialization stage gates, ensuring readiness criteria are achieved, decisions are documented, and stakeholders are aligned prior to progression.
• Establish clear governance around launch risks, assumptions, dependencies, and mitigation plans throughout the commercialization lifecycle.
• Maintain visibility to portfolio-level risks and proactively facilitate discussions to support prioritization and resource allocation decisions.

Cross-Functional Launch Orchestration

• Lead recurring cross-functional launch meetings, ensuring alignment on priorities, risks, actions, and critical path activities.
• Coordinate closely with Marketing, Creative, Packaging Engineering, Regulatory, and regional market teams to align launch execution requirements.
• Partner with Packaging Engineering and Creative teams to ensure artwork development, localization, translation, and approval processes are aligned with launch timelines.
• Collaborate with Supply Planning Launch Specialists to ensure operational feasibility inputs are incorporated into commercialization plans.
• Partner with Supply Planning Launch Specialists to ensure manufacturing capacity requirements, production lead times, and operational readiness assumptions are reflected within commercialization timelines.
• Collaborate with Launch Specialists and Manufacturing teams to understand capacity constraints, industrialization requirements, and production timing needed to support launch commitments.
• Incorporate production planning assumptions into commercialization schedules to ensure launch dates remain executable and aligned with manufacturing realities.
• Facilitate effective communication across internal teams and external partners to support successful commercialization execution.

Cost Governance & Commercialization Economics

• Partner with Procurement, Packaging Engineering, Product Development, and Supply Planning teams to establish and maintain launch cost assumptions throughout commercialization.
• Facilitate commercialization costing stage gates, including initial concept estimates, post-development estimates, and launch-ready cost assessments.
• Ensure cost assumptions, sourcing strategies, manufacturing requirements, and operational risks are incorporated into commercialization decision-making.
• Drive visibility to significant cost changes, financial risks, or sourcing decisions that may impact business cases or launch economics.
• Coordinate cross-functional review and alignment regarding cost-related tradeoffs, including packaging choices, sourcing strategies, production complexity, inventory investments, and launch timing.
• Partner with Procurement and Supply Planning teams to ensure commercialization decisions are supported by realistic cost, sourcing, and operational assumptions.

Commercialization Readiness & Handoff

• Drive cross-functional readiness activities leading into key commercialization stage gates, including Commercialization Readiness and Launch Authorization reviews.
• Facilitate stage gate reviews, ensuring technical, operational, regulatory, sourcing, and financial readiness criteria are achieved prior to progression.
• Facilitate Commercialization Readiness Gate reviews, ensuring cross-functional readiness criteria are achieved and operational ownership is formally transitioned to Supply Planning Launch Specialists.
• Ensure commercialization deliverables, approvals, and launch prerequisites are completed prior to operational ownership transition into Supply Planning.
• Partner closely with Launch Specialists to support seamless transition from commercialization governance into operational execution.
• Maintain visibility and communication continuity through launch execution and stabilization phases.

Commercialization Readiness & Stabilization

• Contribute to the continuous improvement of launch governance processes, project management tools, reporting structures, and commercialization ways of working.
• Support development of scalable commercialization capabilities aligned with rapid business growth and increasing organizational complexity.
• Drive improved transparency, prioritization, and operational alignment across the launch portfolio.
• Identify opportunities to improve launch efficiency, communication effectiveness, decision-making, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Support the evolution of commercialization governance frameworks, readiness criteria, and stage gate methodologies as the organization continues to scale.

Must Haves

• 6-8 years of experience in new product development, commercialization, or project management within highly cross-functional organizations; beauty industry experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex global product launches across regulated international markets.
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end product commercialization lifecycle from concept through launch execution.
• Experience managing integrated cross-functional timelines and coordinating complex stakeholder groups.
• Experience leading cross-functional governance forums, strategic meetings, and stage gate reviews.
• Familiarity with artwork development, packaging localization, translation workflows, and labeling compliance requirements.
• Experience partnering across Product Development, Packaging Engineering, Regulatory, Creative, Supply Chain, Procurement, and Commercial organizations.
• Strong understanding of stage gate processes, milestone governance, commercialization planning methodologies, and decision management frameworks.
• Experience managing complex dependencies, competing priorities, and multiple concurrent launch initiatives.
• Exceptional organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple concurrent priorities in a fast-paced, highly dynamic environment.
• Strong communication, facilitation, stakeholder management, and influence skills.
• Solutions-oriented mindset with the ability to navigate ambiguity, complexity, and changing priorities.
• Strong attention to detail with a consistent track record of delivering against timelines and commitments.
• Ability to identify risks proactively and drive cross-functional alignment around mitigation strategies and business decisions.
• Proficiency in Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and web-based collaboration/project management tools.

Location & Team Scope

Based in New York City, this role oversees teams and partners across facilities in NY, NJ, FL, London, and Paris, with expansion planned in North Texas, Southern California, and Poland.