Program Manager, Continuous Improvement

Fortune Brands' Connected Products Engineering is seeking a Program Manager, Continuous Improvement to serve as the operational backbone of CPE's incident governance, program integrity, and organizational learning functions. This role sits within the Planning, Delivery, and Continuous Improvement organization and reports to the Sr. Director of Planning, Delivery & Continuous Improvement. It works in close partnership with the CTO and CPE leadership team. This is not a program management role in the traditional sense. The person in this role ensures that when things go wrong — and they will — CPE learns from them, closes the loop, and builds systems that make the next incident faster and better handled. That means owning the AAR program from incident declaration to corrective action closure, facilitating hotwash reviews with engineering leadership, producing executive-grade communications and business justifications, and tracking the portfolio of internal improvement projects across a globally distributed organization. The right candidate has operated in high-pressure environments, writes with the precision of a staff officer, can hold senior engineers accountable without making it adversarial, and uses AI tools as amplifiers rather than shortcuts. Strong fluency with Claude Enterprise and GitHub Copilot is expected. This role has historically been an early adopter of AI for AAR analysis, document generation, and structured reasoning.

Responsibilities

Own the CPE After Action Review (AAR) program end-to-end; Facilitate hotwash and post-mortem sessions with engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders; Produce written findings with root cause analysis and corrective action plans; Maintain the AAR tracker in Confluence and ensure open corrective actions are visible, assigned, time-bounded, and progressing; Monitor systemic patterns across incidents and surface risk to leadership; Coordinate distribution of AAR findings to leadership audiences; Drive cross-team accountability for corrective action execution; Monitor active incidents and serve as coordination point during escalations; Develop and maintain incident response playbooks and standard operating procedures; Maintain the Business Continuity Plan (BCP); Own and drive CPE's portfolio of continuous improvement and internal projects; Partner with engineering and program leadership to identify process gaps and build the improvement roadmap; Facilitate agile training and process adoption initiatives; Champion AI productivity tooling adoption; Draft executive communications, point papers, and business justifications; Translate complex operational and engineering findings into clear, business-readable language; Produce structured proposals for organizational capability investments with ROI framing and risk analysis; Coordinate with Jira and Confluence to ensure project tracking is structured, visible, and auditable; Maintain documentation infrastructure in Confluence

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience; 7+ years in program management, technical operations, continuous improvement, or related roles; Demonstrated ownership of a post-incident review, AAR, or equivalent structured organizational learning program; Executive-level written communication — able to draft CEO briefs, incident reports, and business proposals that are ready to send with minimal revision; Strong command of Atlassian Jira and Confluence as program and knowledge management tools; ability to structure a space, not just add pages; Demonstrated ability to build and maintain corrective action tracking and governance systems; Strong facilitation skills — able to run structured post-mortems, hotwash sessions, and leadership alignment meetings; Comfort with AI productivity tools (Claude, Copilot, or equivalent) and genuine interest in using them to accelerate documentation and analysis workflows; Experience working with globally distributed teams across US and international locations; Strong fluency with Claude Enterprise and GitHub Copilot is expected

Nice to have

Advanced degree a plus; Military background with operations, staff, or continuous improvement experience; Background in connected products, IoT, or software/hardware platform environments; Incident management experience in a 24/7 connected product or platform environment; Familiarity with BCP development and maintenance for engineering organizations

Benefits

Annual bonus plan or role-based sales incentive plan; Robust health plans; Market-leading 401(k) program with company contribution; Product discounts; Flexible time off benefits; Adoption benefits; Employee Resource Groups; Onsite daycare; Fitness and recreation amenities