Role: Senior Program Manager

Location: Van Buren Twp, MI

Role ID: 2024-2290

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

The Role

You will be responsible for successfully leading the delivery of complex engineering projects to a diverse list of global customers across a broad range of industries and sectors. You will work with industry recognised experts to deliver cutting edge solutions to our customers.

This role Interfaces between members of the Ricardo engineering team, Growth Solution teams and the Delivery Excellence team from the time of programme award, through to programme delivery to execute a project according to client expectations and corporate requirements.

You will ensure excellent two-way communication of expectations, requirements, and delivery of results against project targets, developing time-lines, and managing project teams.

The Senior Programme Manager is the key customer contact and has full responsibility for delivering the operational, technical, and commercial outcomes for both Ricardo and the Customer, through effective management of all the business resources within Ricardo and suppliers.

Key Responsibilities

As a Senior Programme Manager at Ricardo, you will be responsible for leading the most complex multi-disciplinary projects, managing risk and Ricardo’s commercial exposure whilst ensuring that all projects are completed to time, cost and quality requirements, whilst achieving high levels of customer satisfaction. 

• You will be the senior customer interface for the project, establishing strong and effective customer relationships.
• Ensure projects are delivered in adherence to Ricardo’s internal project management processes and procedures.
• You will work directly with customer and/or Ricardo engineers to understand the scope of the project and to ensure that all objectives are known and achievable.
• Develop a plan and staffing needs to deliver the project, including risks and opportunities.
• Monitor project progress, resources, tools, materials, expenses, and schedules; resolves discrepancies and bring issues to management’s attention, if needed.
• Liaise between the various departments internally to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the project.
• Prepare project reviews and reports for stakeholders on achievements, progress, risk management and change management.
• Deliver superior levels of customer service to both internal and external customers.
• Identification and capture of lessons learned throughout the project to support continuous improvement.
• Managing and monitoring project scope and leading customer negotiations on changes.
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.
• Supporting development of Ricardo’s internal project management capability by supporting and mentoring more junior members of the programme management team.
• Ensures effective communication and coordination on assigned projects between all project participants including clients, vendors, Ricardo leadership, and other departments and engineering staff.
• May have management responsibility for personnel matters.
• Monitors and supervises daily activities, sets priorities to ensure task completion, focus on departmental objectives.
• May lead small teams, resolve problems.

Depending on the project worked on, the role will involve some travel.

Qualifications and Experience

• Be degree-qualified in a relevant subject, currently delivering projects with a minimum of 5 years experience in a multi-disciplinary engineering environment.
• Have a professional project management background with a proven track record of delivery at a senior level.
• Affiliation with a recognized professional programme management body (PMI or APM) would be beneficial.
• Managing technically complex projects.

Skills

• Excellent skills in report and proposal writing.
• Demonstrate good numerical and analytical capability.
• High level proficiency in the Microsoft Office suite plus Microsoft Project. Experience of managing projects within SAP ERP would be beneficial.
• Excellent presentation skills and communication skills.
• Strong but customer-aware negotiation skills; ability to influence.
• Strong problem solving, analytical and listening skills.
• Managing resources outside direct supervisory control to achieve objectives.
• Working as part of a team to achieve team objectives.
• Understanding of and sensitivity to commercial factors.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present to and manage customers.
• The ability to work with the Business Development team to achieve further sales with existing customers.
• Ability to manage changing requirements both within Ricardo and the customer.
• Be commercially astute with a demonstrable track record of successfully negotiating scope changes with customers.
• Have a natural desire to contribute to continuous improvement within the business.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively multi-task.

Knowledge

• Self-supporting to interrogate business systems and generate required documentation and reports to demonstrate project status.

Personal Attributes

• Be a team player with good communication and interpersonal skills.
• Be a self-starter who enjoys solving problems and helping others achieve goals.
• Demonstrate good attention to detail and organisational skills.
• Ability to excel in a fast-paced, dynamic, and matrixed organization.

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalized approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, height, weight, gender identity and sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, arrest record (MI only), parental status (IL only), military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law. VEVRAA Federal Contractor.

Benefits

Our core benefits include paid vacation time off, emergency/sick time, plus 14 holidays, Medical/Dental/Vision plus 401k. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Once you have submitted your application, if qualified, a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

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