Launch Planning Lead

Who are we?
Volvo Cars is a company on a mission; to bring traditional car manufacturing into a connected, sustainable and smart future.
Since 1927, we have been a brand known for our commitment to safety, creating innovative cars that make life less complicated for our consumers. In 2010, we decided to transform our business, resulting in a totally new generation of cars and technologies, as well as steady growth and record sales. Today, we’re expanding our global footprint in Europe, China and the US, and we’re on the lookout for new talent.
We are constantly pushing our own skills and abilities to drive change in the automobile industry like never before. We are looking for innovative, committed people to join us in this endeavour and create safe, sustainable and connected cars. We believe in the power of people and will challenge and support you to reach your full potential. Join us and be part of Volvo Cars’ journey into the future.

The automotive industry is changing rapidly and so are the demands and expectations among consumers. Volvo Cars has taken a strategic decision to lead this change. This means not only continuing to build state of the art premium cars, but to rethink the entire consumer experience and creating competitive offers showing that we put our consumers’ needs in the center. 
Global Online Experience (GOX) is a new function within Volvo that is spearheading this change across the entire organization. We bring our customers value by developing, implementing and operating these new offers, more aligned with today’s customer expectations. Care by Volvo is a great example of this, being implemented in multiple markets globally. Change does not come by itself, however, which is why a specific Launch Management team has been established to lead some of our bigger, more complex change initiatives in this journey.
This role is an instrumental part of the Launch Management team. Multiple launches are being planned in parallel, with various products, markets and key stakeholders involved. Your responsibility will be to connect these teams and their plans in order to create, maintain and communicate our joint launch plan within GOX. The aim is to improve transparency, and therefore ability to handle dependencies between launches, support prioritization and enable clear communication towards markets and our leadership team. 

Main responsibilities
Overall accountable for ensuring one launch plan, fully aligned across GOX. More specifically, this includes e.g.: 
•    Owns our high-level launch plan from GOX, with input from quarterly planning reviews, product clusters, quality assurance plan, technical release plan, training plan and respective launch plan
•    Drives clarity from product clusters on upcoming releases and provides prioritization support
•    Proactive as well as reactive support for our ongoing launch initiatives regarding planning to avoid clashes 
•    Support GOX community in identifying possibilities to cluster multiple releases together
•    Continuous dialogue with QA team and training team to align upcoming releases and their potential test- or training needs
•    Communicate release plan continuously in broader GOX forums, towards our markets and towards our leadership team
•    Drives continuous improvements in this area, with the aim to build the ‘launch machinery’ together with the Launch cluster

Required qualifications
We look for a person with the following qualifications:
•    Proven experience from leading large, complex projects and/or programs in cross-functional teams in a global business for at least 5 years
•    Beneficial to have experience from PMO leading roles
•    Knowledge around agile development and how related implementations are handled successfully
•    Good understanding of interdependencies between commercial, digital and operational needs
•    Fluent in English 

Personal qualities
To be successful and enjoy working in the role you should have the following personal qualities:
•    Outstanding ability to “see the big picture” and to identify dependencies between different deliverables
•    Strong communication- and interpersonal skills in order to successfully interact with our cross functional teams (business, cars, digital)
•    Ability to explain complex matters in an easy way, adapted based on the audience
•    A combination of being able to think strategically and “rolling of your sleeves” and getting things done
•    Enjoy collaboration and taking accountability, as the ability to work within and between teams is key for success
•    Confident in speaking in front of larger audiences

Location
HQ Gothenburg or Stockholm (with expectation to be able to travel to Gothenburg when needed)

Contact & Application
Please apply via the link provided no later than February 27th. Applications and CV's will not be accepted via email. In this process, we work with continuous selection.
If you have any questions regarding the position you are welcome to contact Senior Recruiter Simona Popencu at simona.popencu@volvocars.com