Project Engineer

Description

The company's Auto Coding Solutions (ACS) team in Daresbury is hiring a Senior Project Engineer in the packaging area, reporting to the Senior Manager, Projects (Packaging).

The role runs ACS customer projects from order handover through development, deployment, installation, commissioning, support transition and close-out. You coordinate internal teams, customers and third parties so work is delivered safely, on time, to agreed scope, with tight control of cost, risk, change and project information.

You also run pre-order project reviews, bringing delivery, resource and risk points into business decisions. The job calls for strong customer relationships, clear leadership and sound commercial judgement.

Responsibilities

• Run ACS customer projects from order handover through planning, delivery, go-live support and close-out.
• Build and keep up project plans, milestones, resourcing, customer actions and delivery dependencies.
• Coordinate internal and external project teams, including third parties and customers.
• Track progress against scope, cost and schedule, fixing problems and escalating risks when needed.
• Manage standard and complex projects with control matched to each project's risk.
• Keep project records, decisions, actions and supporting information current and clear.
• Coordinate the business inputs needed for pre-order governance and record the decisions and actions.
• Lead project governance after order, making sure reviews happen at the right stages.
• Keep visibility of risks, issues, assumptions, dependencies and open actions.
• Assess and control changes to scope, cost, delivery dates, technical requirements, resources or customer commitments.
• Record governance decisions, exceptions, actions, owners and due dates, and follow them up.
• Escalate material risks, missing information and decisions beyond your agreed authority.
• Act as the main project contact for the customer after order handover.
• Coordinate customer data, site readiness, access, production downtime, training and acceptance needs.
• Give clear project updates on progress, decisions, risks, actions and changes.
• Chase actions and keep information flowing between internal teams and external stakeholders.
• Manage customer expectations and escalate dependencies or blockers that threaten delivery.
• Monitor project hours, costs, site days, follow-up visits and commercial performance.
• Keep records of scope changes, variation requests and their commercial impact.
• Coordinate customer acceptance and the handover of the live system into Support.
• Review project performance, including the causes and costs of follow-up visits.
• Complete project close-out and make sure every remaining action has a clear owner.
• Run project lessons-learned reviews and log the findings in the central record.

Requirements

• Solid project management experience in software, controls, automation, systems integration or other technical projects.
• Strong planning, organisation, risk management and change control skills.
• Able to help cross-functional groups reach decisions without owning functional evidence or commercial approval.
• Able to coordinate several teams and keep work moving without direct line authority.
• Commercial awareness, including the effect of changes on project cost, scope, resources and schedule.
• Confident communicating with customers and internal stakeholders.
• Able to push back on unclear requirements, incomplete information and unrealistic delivery dates.
• Competent in Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word and the wider Microsoft 365 suite.
• Able to travel to customer sites when required.
• Previous project management experience is required.
• Experience managing customer projects through planning, delivery, implementation and close-out is required.
• Experience facilitating governance or cross-functional project reviews is desirable.
• Experience in project governance, risk management, change control and cost tracking is desirable.
• Experience in software, controls, automation, systems integration, engineering or manufacturing is desirable.
• Experience in food production, packaging, coding, labelling or traceability systems is desirable.

Conditions

Primary base is Auto Coding Solutions in Daresbury, with other locations as the business requires.

Travel to customer sites may be required.