Project Account Manager

**Company Summary:** **** For over 60 years, MeriCal has been at the forefront of innovation in the dietary supplement industry, delivering custom manufacturing and packaging solutions with passion and precision. With state-of-the-art facilities in Southern California and Ogden, UT, we transform ideas into high-quality products—from research and development to the finished products. Our team, with over 30 years of combined experience, is dedicated to crafting exceptional gummies, probiotics, tablets, capsules, chewables, and powders using clinically backed ingredients. At MeriCal, we don’t just meet expectations—we exceed them, every time. Join us and be part of a dynamic, forward-thinking team shaping the future of nutrition! **The Opportunity:** **** The Project Account Manager is a dual function leadership role, responsible for the successful execution of new customer onboarding and new product introductions, while also providing oversight and direction of the Account Support Manager team supporting existing customer business. This role owns the coordination, communication, and execution of projects from initiation through launch, ensuring all key milestones, deliverables, risks, and dependencies are actively managed and communicated. The Project Account Manager serves as a primary cross functional leader, partnering closely with Sales, Planning, Manufacturing, Quality, Procurement, Packaging, Regulatory, and Operations to support a discipline and successful go to market process. The Project Account Manager is ultimately accountable for ensuring new customers and new products are launched within agreed timelines, with clear alignment, proactive issue resolution, and a high standard of professionalism in both internal and external communication. This role also provides leadership to the Account Support Manager team to ensure customer needs, risks, and operational challenges are addressed with urgency and consistency. **What You’ll Do:** **Project Leadership and Launch Execution** - Develop, maintain and present scorecard/metrics/demand forecasts that track progress/challenges/future growth for dedicated accounts. - Lead the onboarding of new customers and introduction of new products using a defined stage-gate/milestone based project management process. - Build, maintain, and drive project plans that clearly identify timeliness, milestones, owners, dependencies, risks, and critical path items. - Ensure projects do not advance without required inputs, approvals, and cross functional alignment. - Facilitate cross functional project meetings to drive progress, remove roadblocks, and maintain accountability for deliverables. - Monitor launch readiness and escalate issues that may impact timing, cost, quality, or customer commitments. - Ensure launch status, open actions, risks, and decisions are clearly documented and communicated to stakeholders. - Partner with internal teams to ensure all startup and launch requirements are completed accurately and on schedule. - Provide Sales with regular updates on launch progress, key milestones, risks, decision points, and open questions requiring commercial alignment. - Support the business in maintaining strong customer relationships through disciplined execution, clear communication, and effective internal coordination. - Identify trends, recurring challenges, process gaps, and drive improvements that strengthen project execution and customer launch performance **Cross Functional Coordination** - Serve as a key liaison between Sales and Operations, ensuring customer expectations are aligned with internal capabilities, timelines and priorities. - Collaborate with Planning, Manufacturing, Quality, Procurement, Packaging, Regulatory, and Shipping to support execution of launch activities and milestone completion. - Drive timely cross functional follow up on open issues related to product readiness, materials, production scheduling, testing, documentation, packaging readiness, and order pr…