Capacity before headcount
Assesses process waste, technology and temporary resource sharing before developing ROI-based proposals for hiring or new roles.
Engineering operations & portfolio leadership
Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaGaurav Sharma
Building stronger teams.
Advancing portfolio performance.
Gaurav Sharma leads a 45-person engineering and project management organization across the USA and Canada, with 10 direct reports. His focus: developing capable leaders, aligning resources with business priorities, and improving portfolio performance.
19+ years of international experience across India, the UAE, Canada, and the United States.
Current role
Senior Project Engineering Manager, North America
ProMinent Fluid Controls Inc. · April 2023–Present
- North American team
- 45 people · 10 direct reports
- Delivery performance
- 10% more projects · same headcount
- International experience
- 19+ years · four countries
Delivery: 2026 YTD versus the same period in 2025, USA and Canada combined; reported October 2026.
01 Leadership scope
Connecting people, capacity
and business performance.
Connects workforce planning, delivery commitments and commercial decisions so teams can meet business priorities with clear responsibility.
North American organization
10 direct reports across both countries
United States Canada
32 team members in the USA · 13 in Canada10 direct reports across both countries
Functions led
- Project Managers
- Project Engineers
- Electrical Engineers
- Mechanical Designers
- Technical Documentation
Budgets grounded in delivery
Brings bottom-up capacity plans and team stretch goals into annual budget discussions with senior leadership, aligning delivery capability with business targets.
Commercial learning, applied earlier
Reviews quoted versus realized margins and brings delivery lessons back into estimating, helping teams address risk before committing to new work.
Leaders who can lead independently
Develops PMs’ commercial judgment and stakeholder relationships so they can make routine decisions and coordinate resources independently.
From mechanical design to project leadership.
- Identify potential
- Aligned a mechanical designer’s strengths and interests with the expectations of a Project Engineer role.
- Build readiness
- Provided eight months of structured training and coaching. The employee secured the role through an internal interview.
- Develop a leader
- Continued coaching supported progression into project management. A separate mentoring effort helped a production manager move into project management in Canada.
Gaurav’s people responsibilities include performance and promotion decisions, leadership development, and hiring business cases developed with HR and senior leadership.
02 Selected impact
More delivery capacity.
Stronger execution discipline.
Selected outcomes connect leadership decisions with delivery capacity, customer commitments, and commercial performance.
Portfolio throughput
More projects. Same headcount.
10%
More projects delivered across North America.
- Challenge
- Meet higher delivery expectations without making additional hiring the default response.
- Leadership action
- Combined Lean process improvement, AI-enabled knowledge tools, and cross-team resource sharing. Developed PMs’ ability to coordinate workloads and make routine decisions independently.
- Result
- Teams delivered 10% more projects with the same headcount, alongside improved portfolio profitability.
USA and Canada combined. 2026 year-to-date versus the same period in 2025; reported October 2026.
Engineering documentation performance
Engineering document submission
99.8%
Up from 83% over two years.
Before83%
After99.8%
97% KPI requirement
- Challenge
- Engineering document flow was affecting customer satisfaction and needed a more reliable submission process.
- Leadership action
- Gaurav analyzed stakeholders and constraints, applied Lean Six Sigma to eliminate waste, refined the workflow, and established a KPI for timely submission.
- Result
- Document submission performance reached 99.8%. Teams exceeded the 97% requirement for 11 consecutive months.
Performance reported October 2026.
Commercial performance
Portfolio profitability
Above benchmark.
Improved from below the internal benchmark.
- Challenge
- Portfolio profitability was below the internal benchmark, with process waste and limited visibility of financial performance requiring attention.
- Leadership action
- Identified underestimated engineering and production effort, strengthened visibility of quoted versus realized margins, and combined waste reduction with shared reference designs and lessons learned to improve future labor estimates.
- Result
- Portfolio profitability moved above the internal benchmark following the combined program of changes.
Result reported October 2026.
03 AI leadership
Making AI useful.
Building judgment alongside it.
Gaurav leads practical AI adoption through team coaching, shared tools and human review across Engineering, Application Engineering, Sales and Procurement.
Bring past experience into the next decision
Launched AI-enabled drawing and lessons-learned libraries that help teams retrieve relevant project designs and experience. Application Engineers use comparable completed projects to develop more accurate labor estimates and prepare more quotations.
Build tools around everyday work
Coaches teams to apply AI in vendor comparisons, commercial document checks and market research, with tools designed around their daily responsibilities.
Keep people accountable for the result
Internal engineering AI key users regularly audit library data. Users receive guidance to check AI-generated results, while vendor-reference tools flag outdated information for replacement.
Reported workflow improvement
2–3 days to 1–2 hours.
Time to find and review relevant past-project information. Team-reported estimate; varies with project size.
Connect technical review with contractual decisions
An AI-assisted review surfaced a mismatch between the assumed feed material and the client’s intended operating conditions. Gaurav escalated the risk to the client’s engineer, prompting redesign and agreement on revised contractual performance guarantees. Redesign is underway.
Make complex specifications easier to review
An AI-assisted tool for reviewing 500–2,000-page client specifications is in design and testing for Application Engineering and project engineering.
Executive learning
Artificial Intelligence: Business Strategies and Applications · Berkeley Haas · 2024
View qualifications04 International career
Experience across India,
the UAE, Canada & the USA.
A career spanning technical sales, proposals, project delivery and engineering supervision, progressing into North American portfolio leadership.
- USAApr 2023–Present
Senior Project Engineering Manager, North America
ProMinent Fluid Controls Inc. · Pittsburgh
Leads engineering operations and project portfolio delivery, aligning capacity, people development and budget planning across the USA and Canada.
- CanadaJul 2015–Apr 2023
Progressive project & engineering leadership
ProMinent Canada · Guelph, Ontario
- Senior Project ManagerApr 2021–Apr 2023
- Project Engineering SupervisorJan 2019–Apr 2021
- Team Leader (Projects)Jan 2016–Dec 2018
- Engineering Project LeadJul 2015–Jan 2016
- UAEJun 2013–Feb 2015
Senior Engineer — Projects (Proposals)
Petronash FZE · Dubai
Technical and commercial proposals, multidisciplinary inputs, project budgets and schedules, vendor coordination, and customer progress reporting.
- IndiaSep 2007–May 2013
Technical sales, projects & proposals
- Senior Engineer, Projects & Proposals · Milton Roy IndiaApr 2011–May 2013 · Noida
- Project Engineer · S.K. SystemsApr 2009–Mar 2011 · New Delhi
- Sales Engineer · DanfossSep 2007–Mar 2009 · New Delhi
05 Credentials
Management discipline.
AI business perspective.
Professional certifications in project management and agile practice, complemented by executive learning in AI strategy and business applications.
PMI certification
Project Management Professional (PMP)®
Project Management Institute
Issued September 11, 2020
Valid through September 11, 2029
PMI certification
PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®
Project Management Institute
Issued July 24, 2021
Valid through July 24, 2027
Berkeley Haas · Executive learning
Artificial Intelligence: Business Strategies and Applications
University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business
Issued November 25, 2024
Certificate of completion
Google Project Management Certificate
Google · Coursera · 2022
Credential recordCertified ScrumMaster (CSM)
Scrum Alliance · Awarded 2020
View credential historyAcademic foundation
B.E., Mechanical EngineeringVisvesvaraya Technological University · 2006
Postgraduate Diploma, Business ManagementICFAI · 2012–2013
06 Recommendations
Leadership seen across
engineering and sales.
Selected excerpts from LinkedIn recommendations received on October 15, 2026.
Direct manager
“strives for deep connections with everyone while still driving constant improvement.”
Cross-functional colleague
“a thoughtful, customer-focused perspective”
Senior colleague
“combines technical capability with a practical, customer-focused approach.”
07 Leadership opportunities
Stronger teams.
Better portfolio outcomes.
For conversations about engineering operations, program and portfolio leadership, and building organizational capability through responsible AI adoption.