Technology – Director Programs

Client is an innovative Canadian corporation with proven expertise in complex Communications, Navigation, Surveillance (CNS), Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems and airport infrastructure projects.

As a major player in airport infrastructure projects, Client designs and constructs intricate projects from air traffic control towers to complete airport construction.

Client’s comprehensive customer support programs ensure that our mission critical systems that are installed around the world are fully operational, providing a high level of safety and performance that the aviation industry can rely on.

Scope of Position

Reporting to the President and CEO, this Senior Program role will oversee all Client global projects. Working in a multi-disciplinary environment, the Director, Programs will be able to manage large, multiple projects and provide operational insights enabling him / her to see things from multiple perspectives.

Director, Programs will focus on the vision of the project and how they can design the program architecture select, prioritize, link and align the projects within the program along with their structural dependencies to help achieve the optimum benefits including a strong profit margin for each program.

The successful candidate will be responsible for the operational success, seamless team management and development, program delivery, and quality control and evaluation and be the key interface to all key stakeholders.

They will need to move projects along, through obstacles and hold regular project reviews with his / her team and with senior management.

The Director, Programs must keep track of a number of projects at the same time. You will have to track spending, adjust budgets, hire and review employees, look for gaps in work efficiency, communicate with your team and suggest changes in the plan on a daily basis.

Duties and Responsibilities :

• Develop and implement a system to evaluate the skill, experience and professional development needs of all staff;
• Master Schedule and budget tracking of multiple projects, knowing who is where and what impact redeployment will have on the completion of other projects.

There will be twenty to thirty ongoing projects of various sizes at any given time, likely four or five large ones; onsite teams are typically two to six people, with regional and local contractors.

• Effective escalation from the project managers and identifying challenges with the schedules and making the team accountable;
• Close cross-functional coordination and central focal point with other teams such as communications, navigations and surveillance engineering as well as purchasing, logistics and sales;
• Responsible for building an organization to replicate the success of winning and supporting existing large project business working closely with all key stakeholders;
• Work with staff to develop objective performance measurements across all sites, to ensure consistent, high-quality evaluation and goal setting for all employees;
• Establish a global capability to deliver and manage projects in order to provide consistency of definition and execution in each of the geographies Client currently operates;
• Recruit, hire, and oversee training and orientation of all staff members;
• Cultivate existing relationships with vendors with the goal of ensuring sufficient resources, and access to services;
• Develop and implement strategies that will maximize the synergies among program areas;
• Establish benchmarks in the operational work plans and review the work on a regular basis and identify issues and adjust the plan when necessary;
• Ensure deliverables are being completed within baseline time scales, cost plans and the expectation of the customer while being aware of net project cash flow;
• Generally an Ottawa based role however from time to time the candidate will be required to travel, approximately 10% 15% of the time.

Travel will be to client sites in developing and third world countries.

Preferred Experience / Education

The successful candidate will lead programs, partner and work collaboratively with high-performance technical teams. Specific requirements include :

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, preferably in a technical or engineering discipline. Masters degree considered an asset.
• At least 10 years of experience with at least five years in a team management role, juggling scarce technical resources across a multidisciplinary, matrix organization.
• Demonstrated success developing, evaluating and delivering medium / large complex multimillion-dollar programs with challenging customers and international environments.

Project deployments of $500K to $10MK with most in the $1M-$5M range.

• Demonstrated management of global operations in multiple time zones and third world cultures.
• Ability to negotiate with in-country partners to ensure delivery of projects on time and on budget.
• Experience with project tracking and productivity tools such as Microsoft Project, Primavera, Excel or other software tools used for tracking multiple projects and competing resources.
• Direct experience in communications operations involving numerous software and hardware vendors.
• Experience in people management roles with recruitment, selection, hiring, coaching, feedback, employee engagement, and performance management.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; ability to plan, prioritize and organize effectively and to make sound, logical decisions.
• Ability to multi-task and manage a demanding and diverse workload.
• Strong commercial awareness having worked in a financially motivated Customer Service role.
• Proven strong business skills with demonstrated strategic and program management experience.
• Fluently bilingual, French and English a must, Spanish, Arabic nice to have.

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