System-Level R&D Project Manager - Leuven, Belgium - Contract

System-Level R&D Project Manager

Initial 6 month freelance contract + extensions (3 year project)

Leuven, Belgium/Hybrid (3 days onsite in Leuven per week)

40 hours/week

What you will do

Your work is at the cross-roads of advanced R&D, project execution and partner interface. You will be responsible to coordinate projects focusing on silicon technology development in a variety of subjects such as Novel Compute Architectures, Scale out System Simulation Platforms, lab-on-chip, and in-silico drug discovery and design leveraging our client's core expertise on advanced semiconductor research. You will be responsible for multiple projects as the coordinator of our client owned tasks. You also interface with technical managers to ensure proper execution of the projects with respect to content, budget and timeline. You will also interface with our client's partners to help the execution of the transversal projects.

• You do a first internal assessment of the resources required to execute a research project (definition of milestones and deliverables, the project team members required to reach the objectives and an overview of dependencies). In addition, you ensure a balance between customer needs and our client's available resources and priorities in collaboration with the technical lead/manager.
• You define a way of working for the project team (meeting schedule, documentation, and reporting, ).
• You monitor progress with respect to the approved plan (eg, keep track of key deliverables, critical lot progress, create and track resource dashboards).
• You capture and examine issues/risks and estimate the impact. When needed you escalate to higher management.
• You explore and identify value creation opportunities in work methods and business processes in collaboration with the various stakeholders in the different units.
• You lead or participate in projects that drive operational effectiveness.
• You work on implementing and improving our overall project methodology.

Who you are

• You have obtained a master's degree, preferably in science or engineering. We value your extensive track record in project and change management, and project delivery. You have a background in common project management methodologies, processes, and techniques that you apply in a pragmatic way.
• Your experience in system-level R&D projects will be useful.
• You are a problem-solver with a strong focus on efficiency.
• You enjoy building strong internal and external relationships, have a customer focus and are result-oriented.
• Excellent networker and communicator with good presentation skills, and ability to work with varied audiences.
• You can bring your own point of view in a convincing way and you have strong presentation skills.
• You can communicate at different levels within the organization.
• You appreciate new challenges, have eye for detail and you have a high level of discretion when handling confidential information.
• Given the international character of our client, good knowledge of (spoken and written) English is required.
• You are able to cope with an organisational context entailing exploratory work, scope setting on-the-go,