Automotive Program Planner

At Tata Technologies we make product development dreams a reality by designing, engineering and validating the products of tomorrow for the world’s leading manufacturers. Due to our continued growth we are now recruiting for a Automotive Program Planner to be based at our office in Warwick. Our Engineering Research and Development department (ER&D) is a fast-growing function within Tata Technologies Limited that is assembled to work on exciting projects globally for multiple customers.

It comprises highly specialized engineers across Automotive, Aerospace and Industrial Heavy Machinery. The Role: This is an important and proactive role working within EU Vehicle Programmes. The position leads and manages the overall vehicle programme plan in line with the relevant New Production Introduction milestones.

The Automotive Program Planner is responsible for owning and managing the master programme schedule in Microsoft Project, ensuring alignment across Engineering (including software), Purchasing, Manufacturing, Quality and Launch functions to achieve programme timing, cost, and quality objectives. Area of Responsibility

• Develop and maintain the integrated vehicle programme plan covering all phases from Concept, Architecture Definition, Design, Development, Validation, Industrialisation, Launch, and SOP.
• Plan and govern key vehicle gateways and maturity events, including architecture and design freezes, DV/PV builds, tooling readiness, APQP, PPAP/PSW, homologation, launch readiness, SOP and J1.
• Own the programme critical path and near-critical paths; analyse float, constraints, interfaces and schedule sensitivity, and communicate the key delivery drivers
• Conduct schedule health checks covering missing logic, open ends, excessive constraints, negative float, unrealistic durations, out-of-sequence progress and baseline variance.
• Coordinate cross-functional planning activities with Engineering, Quality, Purchasing, Manufacturing and Launch teams.
• Integrate software drops, feature and network releases, calibration maturity, ECU availability, lab-car/rig events and hardware-software validation into the vehicle plan.
• Support customer and stakeholder reviews with robust planning and delivery status.
• Work with the team to provide regular programme reports including 4-week look ahead and progress curves. Knowledge / Experience
• Five or more years of programme planning, project controls or integrated scheduling experience, including at least three years in automotive or another complex product-development environment.
• Demonstrable ownership of a whole-vehicle, propulsion, electrical/electronic, software, manufacturing or major-system schedule across multiple lifecycle phases.
• Advanced practical use of Microsoft Project and experience developing credible critical-path and schedule recovery plans.
• Strong knowledge of automotive gateways, design maturity, builds, tooling, supplier readiness, validation, homologation and launch.
• Ability to facilitate cross-functional planning, challenge delivery assumptions and present options and consequences to senior stakeholders.
• Foundation or practitioner-level qualification in project management or project controls, such as APM, PMI, PRINCE2 or equivalent.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Project & Excel
• High proficiency in Risk management
• Awareness of Monitoring and control
• Awareness of Change control If you are passionate about bringing innovation to the projects you work on and want to join a global company, then this is the place for you. Tata Technologies: Engineering a better world. Tata Technologies would like to thank all applicants for their interest, each application will be reviewed against the set criteria for the role. We would like to advise that only candidates under consideration will be contacted. If you do not hear from us within 10 working days following the closing date it will mean that unfortunately your application has not been successful. We will however retain your details for any suitable future opportunities.