Senior Technical Project Manager R&D
Nearfield Instruments B.V. · Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland
- Location
- Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland
- Work location
- On-site
- Employment
- Full-time
- Posted
- 31 Oct 2025
About the job
As Senior Project Manager R&D, you will lead the execution of innovative, challenging R&D projects that bring our next-generation metrology solutions to market. Working closely with our R&D team, you enable a multi-disciplinary group spanning hardware, software, and algorithm development to deliver against an ambitious roadmap. Your role is pivotal in ensuring our technology meets customer performance requirements and delivery timelines — and you do this through structure, clear planning, and strong cross-functional leadership rather than deep domain expertise. You'll support the R&D Manager, who drives the overall technology roadmap.
What you're going to do
You will lead end-to-end R&D projects from concept through prototype and validation, all the way to productization readiness. You build and maintain detailed project plans, timelines, resource allocation, deliverables, risk; and you keep a complex, cross-functional team moving even when the path isn't fully defined yet.
Your main responsibilities include
- Leading end-to-end R&D projects, from concept through prototype and validation to productization.
- Developing and maintaining detailed project plans, including timelines, resource allocation, deliverables, and risk management.
- Coordinating cross-functional project teams spanning multiple engineering disciplines.
- Driving alignment between technical development and customer or market requirements, in collaboration with product marketing.
- Working with product development programs, design & engineering, and systems engineering to deliver what's needed for productization.
- Monitoring progress against milestones and budget, escalating issues early and driving them to resolution.
- Ensuring projects comply with relevant quality and regulatory standards.
- Acting as a key liaison between R&D, Product Marketing, Systems Engineering, and Design & Engineering.
- Continuously improving how we plan and run projects, in a fast-moving, precision-focused environment.
Who you'll be working with
You will work closely with the R&D Manager and a multi-disciplinary engineering team, alongside Product Marketing, Systems Engineering, and Design & Engineering. You'll be the connective tissue between technical development and the customer and business requirements it needs to serve, building trust and alignment across teams, often without a formal reporting line to draw on.
Who you are
You are an experienced project manager who brings structure to ambiguity. You're equally comfortable building a detailed plan and adjusting it on the fly, and you know how to keep a multi-disciplinary team aligned and moving, even under pressure.
You have
- Proven experience managing complex, cross-functional projects in a high-tech, engineering, or R&D environment, ideally using structured methodologies such as Agile or Stage-Gate.
- Strong planning and organizational skills, with the ability to manage scope, timelines, budget, and resources across a multi-disciplinary project.
- Solid risk and issue management skills — you spot problems early and drive them to resolution.
- Excellent stakeholder management, communicating effectively with technical teams, senior leadership, suppliers, and customers.
- A structured, data-driven approach to tracking progress and supporting decision-making.
- The ability to translate business goals and customer needs into clear, actionable project plans.
- Strong communication skills and the presence to build trust and motivate teams, including where no direct reporting line exists.
- Comfort working in a fast-paced, technical environment, even without deep prior knowledge of metrology or AFM technology — a technical affinity and the willingness to learn fast are what matter most.
From Nearfield Instruments B.V.'s own posting, which is always the source of truth. Apply there.