Program Manager, Continuous Improvement

Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc. is an industry-leading home, security and digital products company. We’re focused on exciting opportunities within the home, security and commercial building markets. Our driving purpose is to elevate every life by transforming spaces into havens. We believe our work and our brands can have incredibly positive impacts for not just our business and shareholders, but for people and the planet, too.

At Fortune Brands, we’re building something big. We’re advancing exciting innovations in all of our products and processes. We’re delivering trust, dependability, sustainability, and style. To make it all happen, we’ve transformed our workplace into an environment where smart, ambitious people have the support to reach their fullest potential.

When you join Fortune Brands, you become part of a high-performing team empowered to think big, learn fast and make bold decisions. We support an inclusive culture where everyone is encouraged be their authentic selves, and where our differences and unique perspectives are a key strength.

Explore life at Fortune Brands here.

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.

POSITION LOCATION:

This is a hybrid position based in our world-class Deerfield, IL campus OR San Francisco, CA, with flexibility to work from home on Mondays and Fridays. The campus offers vibrant, collaborative workspaces, along with amenities for dining, onsite daycare, fitness, and recreation.

Given the globally distributed nature of CPE, occasional off-hours coordination and limited travel should be expected.

Key Responsibilities 

Incident Governance & AAR Program

• Own the CPE After Action Review (AAR) program end-to-end: from incident declaration through hotwash facilitation, AAR authorship, corrective action assignment, and closure tracking
• 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; ensure all open corrective actions are visible, assigned, time-bounded, and progressing
• Monitor for systemic patterns across incidents (infrastructure, mobile, IoT platform, security) and surface risk to CPE and brand leadership proactively
• Coordinate distribution of AAR findings to appropriate leadership audiences — including brand leadership (Yale, August, Moen, Master Lock) and IT leadership — based on incident scope
• Drive cross-team accountability for corrective action execution — not just tracking, but closure
• Monitor active incidents in CPE's incident management channels and serve as the coordination point between engineering, product, and leadership during escalations
• Develop and maintain incident response playbooks and standard operating procedures across water, security, access control, and platform product lines
• Maintain the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) for Connected Products Engineering; ensure on-call rotation clarity and escalation path documentation are current and understood

Continuous Improvement Portfolio

• Own and drive CPE's portfolio of continuous improvement and internal projects — including corrective action workstreams, process reform initiatives, and organizational capability investments
• Partner with engineering and program leadership to identify process gaps and build the improvement roadmap
• Facilitate agile training and process adoption initiatives as assigned by senior leadership
• Champion AI productivity tooling adoption (Claude Enterprise, GitHub Copilot) within incident documentation and internal project workflows

Executive Communications & Business Justification

• Draft executive communications, point papers, and business justifications on behalf of CPE leadership — including CEO-level briefs, budget justifications, and program status updates
• Translate complex operational and engineering findings into clear, business-readable language for FBIN leadership and cross-brand stakeholders
• Produce structured proposals for organizational capability investments (tooling, headcount, process programs) with ROI framing and risk analysis

Organizational Process & Knowledge Management

• Coordinate with Jira and Confluence to ensure project tracking is structured, visible, and auditable
• Work with system owners to maintain program structure in Confluence, including Frontdoor, space organization, and program-to-page linking
• Maintain documentation infrastructure in Confluence that makes CPE's operational history navigable and actionable

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience; advanced degree a plus
• 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

Preferred Qualifications

• 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

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:

Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc. is an industry-leading home, security and digital products company. We’re focused on exciting opportunities within the home, security and commercial building markets. Our driving purpose is to elevate every life by transforming spaces into havens. We believe our work and our brands can have incredibly positive impacts for not just our business and shareholders, but for people and the planet, too.

At Fortune Brands, we’re building something big. We’re advancing exciting innovations in all of our products and processes. We’re delivering trust, dependability, sustainability, and style. To make it all happen, we’ve transformed our workplace into an environment where smart, ambitious people have the support to reach their fullest potential.

When you join Fortune Brands, you become part of a high-performing team empowered to think big, learn fast and make bold decisions. We support an inclusive culture where everyone is encouraged be their authentic selves, and where our differences and unique perspectives are a key strength.

Explore life at Fortune Brands here.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Fortune Brands believes in fair and equitable pay. A reasonable estimate of the base salary range for this role is Hiring Pay Range: $115,000 USD - $187,000 USD. Please note that actual salaries may vary within the range, or be above or below the range, based on factors including, but not limited to, education, training, experience, professional achievement, business need, and location. In addition to base salary, employees will participate in either an annual bonus plan based on company and individual performance, or a role-based sales incentive plan.

At Fortune Brands, we support the overall health and wellness of our associates by offering comprehensive, competitive benefits that prioritize all aspects of wellbeing and provide flexibility for our teammates’ unique needs. This includes robust health plans, a market-leading 401(k) program with a company contribution, product discounts, flexible time off benefits, adoption benefits, and more. We offer numerous ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) to foster a sense of belonging for all associates.

Fortune Brands is built on industry-leading brands and innovation within the high-growth categories of water, outdoors and security. The Company makes innovative products for residential and commercial environments, with a growing focus on digital solutions and products that add luxury, contribute to safety and enhance sustainability. To learn more, visit our website at fbin.com.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Fortune Brands is an equal opportunity employer. Fortune Brands evaluates qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability/handicap status, marital status, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic history or information, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Reasonable Accommodations

Fortune Brands is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or interview process, please contact us at [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request along with your contact information.

Important Notice: Protect Yourself from Fraudulent Job Postings

To protect yourself from fraudulent job postings or recruitment scams, please note that Fortune Brands job postings are exclusively hosted on our website at fbin.com/careers via our SmartRecruiters platform. Fortune Brands will never request banking information or sensitive personal details until an offer of employment has been accepted and the onboarding process begins.