Senior R&D Project Manager

Job Summary / Purpose

Own and lead selected R&D projects (Discovery, New Product Development or Life Cycle Management) toward proof of concept or market authorization and commercialization, acting as a true Project Leader with strength in rigorous project management technique, genuine leadership, and recognized scientific and product development expertise in the project's domain.

Act as the single point of accountability for project delivery — time, cost, quality and business impact — while empowering and developing the project team, navigating scope and portfolio changes effectively, and connecting every project decision to Ceva's strategic, competitive and customer context.

Leadership Accountabilities

• Make and own project decisions within defined authority thresholds and escalate to governance (ISC / SPOC / ComEx) with a ready-to-decide solution and its trade-off whenever those thresholds are exceeded.
• Understand and champion Ceva's strategic, competitive and customer context to explain why the developed product matters, anticipate its business impact, and connect decisions to product range and portfolio value and evolution.
• Demonstrate foresight across the entire project lifecycle, from development through commercialization, ensuring alignment with market needs and business objectives.
• Communicate in a clear, concise, logical, transparent and timely manner to foster understanding and enable decision making; communicate project status and recommend trade-off decisions at governance forums and within the project team.
• Build, lead and develop the cross-functional project team; delegate real ownership of workstreams and actively support team members' growth; participate in objective setting and assessment of project team members.
• Drive continuous improvement, adaptability and change: challenge existing practices, foster a test-and-learn mindset for innovation and turn learnings into standards reused beyond the project.

Project Management Accountabilities

• Structure and own the project plan (scope, WBS, sequencing, critical path, timeline, scorecard, KPI) and keep it current in the corporate PM tool.
• Proactively manage risks, opportunities, issues and changes; anticipate deviations and propose corrective action and their trade-offs before being asked.
• Champion the use of digital and AI-enabled tools to strengthen forecasting, planning and reporting, and to reduce manual effort.
• Understand, track budget and forecast, manage variance against the business case, and integrate financial and operational trade-offs into project decisions.
• Structure and own project documentation and updates, resource management, timeline estimation and reporting.
• Show complete project ownership and scientific understanding of all aspects of the project.

Scientific and Product Development Expertise

• Bring genuine, credentialed scientific expertise to the project (e.g. disease knowledge, microbiology, immunology, CMC or another domain relevant to the project) to independently challenge technical rationale and interpret study data.
• Conduct a regular scientific watch on internal and external advances.
• Curate an external network of expertise in the scientific area involved.
• Master the end-to-end product development lifecycle and anticipate cross-functional dependencies (regulatory, quality, manufacturing, commercial) before they are raised by others and propose solutions with related probability of success.
• Integrate regulatory, quality and IP/market considerations into project planning, risk anticipation and prioritization, ensuring strict adherence to compliance and ethical standards throughout the development lifecycle.

Qualifications

• Advanced scientific degree in a life sciences, veterinary sciences or related field (PhD or post-doctoral experience strongly preferred; a Master's degree with substantial equivalent scientific expertise may be considered).
• PMP / PMI or equivalent project management certification is nice to have.
• Genuine scientific/technical expertise in the relevant domain (e.g. disease knowledge, microbiology, immunology, CMC), evidenced by an advanced degree, publications, patents or a recognized R&D expert track record.
• Proven project management track record, applying standard PM tools and methodologies (agile and waterfall) rigorously.
• Business acumen: experience presenting to governance bodies and making and owning autonomous decisions within defined thresholds.
• Comfortable with digital and AI-enabled PM tools and data-driven reporting (experience with Smartsheets specific PM tool a plus).
• Knowledge of GMP/GLP/GCP and the regulatory framework for biological or pharmaceutical products.