Mergers & Acquisitions Project Manager

About the role

The M&A Project Manager at Kelso Industries is responsible for managing the acquisition process from initial opportunity through post-close integration. This role requires coordination across various departments including legal, finance, operations, HR, IT, and executive leadership.

Responsibilities

• Manage the end-to-end acquisition process from initial target evaluation through post-close integration.
• Develop and maintain detailed project plans, milestones, task lists, and timelines for every transaction.
• Cook up cross-functional due diligence efforts across Legal, Finance, HR, IT, Operations, Risk, Insurance, Payroll, Benefits, and other functional teams.
• Track diligence requests, outstanding items, and closing deliverables while holding internal and external stakeholders accountable.
• Prepare executive dashboards, weekly pipeline reports, and transaction status updates for leadership.
• Organize diligence materials, maintain virtual data rooms, and ensure documentation is complete and current.
• Cook up internal and external meetings, diligence calls, management presentations, and closing activities.
• Identify schedule risks, bottlenecks, and dependencies, escalating issues before they impact closing timelines.
• Support integration planning and ensure post-close action items are completed.
• Continuously improve Kelso's M&A processes, templates, playbooks, reporting, and project management tools.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Project Management, or related field.
• 3–7 years of experience in project management, corporate development, transaction management, consulting, private equity operations, investment banking support, legal operations, or another highly organized cross-functional environment.
• Exceptional organizational and project management skills.
• Ability to manage numerous concurrent projects with competing deadlines.
• Strong Excel and PowerPoint skills.
• Experience creating executive-level reports and dashboards.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Strong attention to detail and follow-through.
• Comfortable working with senior executives and outside advisors.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting mergers & acquisitions, corporate development, or private equity-backed companies.
• Experience using project management platforms such as Monday.com, Smartsheet, Asana, Jira, or Microsoft Project.
• Familiarity with virtual data rooms and due diligence processes.
• Experience with CRM such as Salesforce or other pipeline management systems.
• Knowledge of financial statements and basic transaction terminology.