Senior Project Manager, R&D Processing

As our Senior Project Manager, you'll lead strategic cross-functional projects in the earliest phases of innovation. Working within our Research & Innovation team, you'll drive the development of future automated manufacturing solutions for decoration, coating, printing, and pre-assembly of moulded plastic components. This role sits firmly in the space between innovation and execution. You'll be responsible for creating clarity in uncertain environments, guiding cross-functional teams, and ensuring promising technologies progress from concept through to proven manufacturing prototypes.

• Built 7+ years of experience within R&D environments, combined with significant program management and/or project leadership abilities.
• Delivered successful technology development projects as the accountable project manager within engineering, manufacturing, or innovation organisations.
• Led projects in early-stage innovation environments where technologies were at a low level of maturity and required structured development towards proven concepts.
• Managed the progression of emerging or unproven technologies from initial idea through concept development and prototype validation.
• Applied strong technical understanding to guide project decisions while balancing strategic objectives and business value.
• Communicated compelling technology visions and secured stakeholder support for projects involving significant uncertainty and evolving outcomes.
• Solid Stakeholder Management Skills and ability to create followership.
  

• Worked with technologies related to decoration, coating, printing, or processing of plastic components.
• Applied knowledge of plastics within an industrial manufacturing environment.
• Gained experience within consumer goods manufacturing organisations with high product variation.
• Contributed to technology development and manufacturing innovation programmes within large-scale industrial businesses.
  

• A clear path for maturing a highly prioritised new printing technology from ealry idea to a proven manufacturing protoype.
• Evidence of technology progression through defined technology and manufacturing readiness stages.
• Strong alignment across stakeholders on ambition, priorities, risks, and progress.
• Foundations for successful handover to Technology Transfer and future manufacturing deployment.
• Ways of working that help a growing Research & Innovation team succeed.
  

If you've worked in a role where you led technology development projects from early concept through to proven maturity within a large engineering or manufacturing company, you'll feel at home here. What matters most is your ability to operate confidently in low-maturity innovation environments, navigate ambiguity, and create momentum around technologies that are still being defined.

You'll join the newly established Research & Innovation team within R&D Processing and therefore ways of working and operating principles are not fully defined. The team's purpose is to create breakthrough concepts that could significantly influence future LEGO® products and manufacturing capabilities.

The team combines deep experience with an entrepreneurial mindset and is still shaping some of its ways of working. You'll help build those foundations while bringing people together around a shared vision and creating commitment to progress in a collaborative hybrid working rhythm.

Success means advancing a strategically important technology programme through uncertainty while creating confidence among project teams and stakeholders. Over the next 12–18 months, the team is focused on delivering several high-priority innovation projects while continuing to establish its operating model. You'll work closely with Technology Transfer, Product Design, Quality, Materials Engineering, and manufacturing teams to ensure promising technologies develop into viable future manufacturing solutions.

Applications are reviewed on an ongoing basis. However, please note we do amend or withdraw our jobs and reserve the right to do so at any time, including prior to any advertised closing date. So, if you're interested in this role we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

Here is what you can expect: