Project Director

Role Description

The Project Director serves as the senior delivery leader and primary customer-facing leader for FORTNA’s strategic, high-value accounts (>$60M). This role operates as the “enterprise-level project manager” and trusted advisor to the customer, accountable for the successful execution of automation programs across various U.S. sites. This individual must thrive in a fast-paced, high-demand customer environment, balancing executive stakeholder engagement, multi-site coordination, and internal team leadership to ensure consistent, high-quality delivery. The Project Director is ultimately responsible for aligning customer expectations with operational execution while driving accountability, communication, and results across all workstreams. This is a remote role with significant travel required based on customer and project needs.

Responsibilities

• Customer Leadership & Relationship Management
  • Serve as the primary customer-facing leader for a major, high-value project site, ensuring alignment on execution priorities, expectations, risks, and outcomes.
  • Build and maintain trusted working relationships with customer project leaders, site leadership, and key stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Act as the voice of the customer within the project team while maintaining appropriate boundaries, scope discipline, accountability, and commercial alignment.
  • Lead regular customer communication, including project updates, issue resolution, escalation management, schedule reviews, and performance discussions.
  • Partner with internal leaders to support customer confidence, project transparency, and timely resolution of critical issues.
• Project Execution & Site Delivery
  • Own end-to-end execution of a large, complex customer project site, typically exceeding $60M in value.
  • Lead all phases of project delivery from transition out of solution design through installation, commissioning, testing, go-live, and project closeout.
  • Manage project scope, budget, schedule, risks, resources, contractual obligations, and customer commitments.
  • Coordinate across project managers, engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, installation, software, controls, safety, and commissioning teams to ensure integrated execution.
  • Anticipate and proactively address operational, technical, customer, and site-level challenges in a complex, high-visibility environment.
  • Ensure successful delivery of integrated solutions, which may include MHE, robotics, controls, WCS/WMS, software, and other automation technologies.
• Cross-Functional Leadership
  • Provide day-to-day leadership to a matrixed project team across multiple functions, disciplines, and workstreams.
  • Set clear priorities, expectations, timelines, and accountability across internal and external project stakeholders.
  • Drive alignment between project teams, functional leaders, vendors, subcontractors, and customer representatives.
  • Mentor and support project managers and site-level leaders to strengthen execution discipline, ownership, and issue resolution.
  • Promote a culture of safety, urgency, transparency, collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Financial, Commercial & Risk Management
  • Drive project financial performance through disciplined forecasting, cost management, margin protection, change management, and risk mitigation.
  • Monitor project performance against budget, schedule, margin, cash flow, and contractual milestones.
  • Identify scope changes, cost risks, schedule impacts, and customer-driven changes; partner with commercial and functional leaders to ensure appropriate documentation and resolution.
  • Lead project-level risk mitigation planning and decision-making across complex dependencies and competing priorities.
  • Escalate critical risks, trade-offs, and decisions in a timely and fact-based manner.
• Operational Excellence & Strategic Execution
  • Align project execution with customer business objectives, contractual commitments, and FORTNA delivery standards.
  • Partner with Sales, Solution Design, Engineering, Delivery, Software, and Operations teams to ensure a seamless transition from design to execution.
  • Drive value engineering, cost optimization, schedule recovery, and performance improvements without compromising safety, quality, or customer outcomes.
  • Ensure project governance, reporting, documentation, and communication practices support disciplined execution and informed decision-making.
  • Apply supply chain automation and large-scale implementation best practices to improve project delivery, customer experience, and business results.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated project leadership experience managing large, complex customer implementations, preferably exceeding $60M in project value.
• Proven ability to lead major site-based project execution in a high-pressure, customer-facing environment.
• Strong experience managing project scope, budget, schedule, risks, resources, contractual obligations, and customer expectations.
• Financial and business acumen, including forecasting, cost control, margin management, change management, and risk mitigation.
• Ability to lead cross-functional, matrixed teams and influence stakeholders without direct authority.
• Strong customer relationship skills with the ability to communicate clearly, manage escalations, and maintain customer confidence.
• Experience coordinating engineering, installation, software, controls, supply chain, manufacturing, commissioning, and project management workstreams.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills with the ability to navigate ambiguity and drive timely resolution.
• Excellent communication skills, including project reporting, stakeholder updates, executive-level summaries, and customer presentations.
• Ability to mentor project managers and site-level leaders while reinforcing accountability and execution discipline.
• Highly proficient in project management tools and Microsoft Office Suite.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree (or international equivalent).
• 8+ years of experience in program management, project delivery, or supply chain/automation leadership.

Preferred Education and Experience

• Experience managing large-scale automation, material handling, or supply chain transformation programs.
• PMP® certification.

Physical Requirements

• Travel to sites will require time in operational/construction environments and use of PPE as required.