Strategy Program Manager
About AET
AET is a professional services firm specializing in geotechnical engineering, environmental consulting, materials testing, and construction observation. With offices across the Midwest, AET serves clients in infrastructure, commercial development, energy, and government sectors.
Job Summary
The Strategy Program Manager plays a critical role in executing AET's enterprise transformation program. This position is responsible for the governance, coordination, and execution discipline that keeps multiple interconnected strategic initiatives moving forward simultaneously, across multiple years.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Own the governance structure that keeps the transformation program running — cross-initiative coordination cadence, integrated program roadmap, dependency and risk tracking, and the governance calendar across all active initiatives.
Translate strategic priorities into clear, actionable execution plans with defined milestones, owners, and dependencies.
Design and facilitate program meetings, prepare pre-work, follow through on decisions, and ensure the program maintains a consistent, reliable operating rhythm.
Facilitate cross-initiative coordination to resolve dependencies and conflicts between workstreams. Hold multiple workstreams progress simultaneously, track complex interdependencies, and maintain forward momentum across a long-horizon program.
Maintain and continuously update the RAID log and program dashboard.
Support the business leads and executive sponsors who own each initiative, helping them build realistic work plans, track against milestones, surface risks before they become crises, and drive decisions to closure on schedule.
Define and deploy project management templates, standards, and operating rhythms that initiative teams use to run their work.
Prepare and deliver the monthly program update for the senior leadership team, maintain the integrated roadmap, and develop the materials that support executive decision-making.
Synthesize complexity into clear, concise narratives for senior audiences, ensuring the right people have the right information at the right time.
Prepare options papers, business case framing, and decision structures that enable leaders to make timely, well-informed decisions.
Track decisions and ensure follow-through after they are made. Prepare leaders in advance for upcoming decisions and flag issues before they become blockers.
Contribute to a culture of accountability, transparency, and disciplined execution.
Actively develop the project management and execution skills of the business leads and sponsors working alongside this role.
Support the annual strategic planning process, translating confirmed priorities into execution plans, maintaining the multi-year roadmap, and managing future-phase work to ensure nothing falls through the cracks between planning cycles.
Required Qualifications and Requirements
Bachelor's degree in business, organizational development, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
7 or more years of experience in program management, transformation management, or strategy execution.
Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-workstream programs over multiple years in a small to mid-sized organization where success required building structure rather than inheriting it.
Demonstrated change management expertise including the ability to plan for and support adoption, not just delivery of operating model, process redesign, systems implementation, and culture change.
Comfortable adjusting quickly when priorities shift or new constraints emerge without losing momentum on the broader program along with demonstrated ability to create structure where it does not exist and make sound decisions with incomplete information.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to frame complex information clearly and concisely for senior audiences.
Exceptional ability to influence without formal authority, engaging effectively with senior leaders and cross-functional teams.
Experience working effectively across a wide range of stakeholders, from front-line teams to senior executives, without direct authority over any of them.
Skilled at running productive meetings, surfacing real issues, and helping groups make decisions rather than talking around them.
Experience in the architecture, engineering, or construction industry is a plus but not required.
Pay Transparency
Base compensation is expected to be in the range of $95,000.00 and $130,000.00 annually based on skill set and experience. AET offers a comprehensive benefits package, including health benefits, insurance, Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), long term savings, paid time off, and professional development opportunities.
Physical Demands
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear. The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; use hands or fingers, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to sit; climb or balance, and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.