Associate Project Manager, Fittings

About the role

Responsibilities

• Support the development and maintenance of integrated project plans and timelines for assigned Fittings development initiatives from kickoff through production readiness and market introduction.
• Maintain accurate visibility to project milestones, responsibilities, dependencies, deliverables, decisions, and open actions.
• Track progress against established milestones and identify potential delays, missing information, dependencies, or emerging issues for review with the Project Manager.
• Maintain project status reporting, ensuring information from Product, Design, Engineering, Compliance, Quality, Supply Chain, and manufacturing partners is current and accurate.
• Support recurring project meetings through agenda preparation, documentation of decisions and actions, and follow-up with responsible stakeholders.
• Track open risks and issues, ensuring ownership and next steps are clearly documented and escalating concerns to the Project Manager when progress or timing is at risk.
• Support the Project Manager in preparing clear project updates and risk visibility for Product leadership.
• Support coordination of product requirements, drawings, specifications, prototypes, samples, testing, approvals, and technical information between Waterworks teams and manufacturing partners.
• Maintain organized and accurate project documentation throughout the development process.
• Track prototype and sample development in partnership with Product, Design, Engineering, Quality, and manufacturers.
• Monitor Engineering, Compliance, and Quality milestones and ensure status, requirements, and outstanding actions are reflected in project plans.
• Track development issues through resolution, maintaining clear ownership, timing, and status and elevating potential risks to the Project Manager.
• Support change management by maintaining accurate documentation of changes, decisions, approvals, and resulting project impacts.
• Develop a working knowledge of Waterworks Fittings products, development processes, technical requirements, and manufacturing capabilities.
• Maintain regular communication with key European manufacturing partners to gather project updates and confirm progress against established milestones.
• Support manufacturer visits and project reviews to provide direct visibility into development progress, prototypes, tooling, testing, samples, and production readiness.
• Follow up with manufacturing partners on open actions, required information, samples, documentation, and agreed deliverables.
• Compare reported project status against established plans and identify inconsistencies, delays, or potential risks for review with the Project Manager.
• Maintain clear documentation of manufacturer commitments, timing, open issues, and required decisions.
• Build collaborative working relationships with manufacturing partners while developing knowledge of their capabilities, processes, and development requirements.
• Provide timely information to the Project Manager and Waterworks teams regarding development progress and emerging concerns.
• Maintain clear, consistent project information across timelines, milestones, decisions, actions, risks, and dependencies using available project management tools and processes.
• Ensure project documentation and status information are organized, current, and accessible to appropriate stakeholders.
• Support consistent project management practices across assigned Fittings initiatives.
• Assist in preparing information for project reviews, roadmap discussions, and leadership updates.
• Support the continued development of project management tools, systems, templates, and processes as the function evolves
• Identify opportunities to improve project information flow, documentation, and visibility across Waterworks teams and manufacturing partners.
• Strong organizational and project coordination skills with exceptional attention to detail and follow-through.
• Ability to manage and synthesize information across multiple concurrent projects, stakeholders, and priorities.
• Proactive approach to identifying missing information, potential delays, inconsistencies, and emerging project risks.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to build effective working relationships across Product, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, and external manufacturing partners.
• Comfortable working within technical product development and manufacturing environments.
• Curious and willing to develop a strong understanding of products, manufacturing processes, and project dependencies.
• Comfortable working within a global organization across multiple locations and time zones.
• Ability to communicate concerns clearly and confidently when project information indicates potential risk.
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent international degree.
• Must be fluent in Portuguese and English
• 3–5 years of Project Management, Project Coordination, Product Development, Engineering Program Management, manufacturing, or related experience.
• Experience supporting the development of physical products preferred.
• Experience working with manufacturers or suppliers preferred.
• Exposure to technical or complex product development strongly preferred.
• Experience with project management platforms such as Smartsheet preferred; experience with PLM systems beneficial.
• Strong proficiency with standard business productivity and project tracking tools.
• Superior communication skills, verbal and written.
• Position is based in Portugal with regular travel to manufacturing partners throughout Europe.
• International travel to the United States as required 15%.

Benefits

• Dental
• Vision
• 401(k)
• PTO
• Bonus