Program Manager - Capital Portfolio

Overview

Placement Type:

Temporary

Salary:

$70-80 Hourly

Start Date:

ASAP

Join a leading organization dedicated to delivering essential services that power communities and drive progress. As a partner with Aquent, you'll contribute to a mission-critical infrastructure that impacts countless lives daily, ensuring reliability and innovation in a vital industry.

Our client oversees one of the largest high-voltage transmission capital portfolios in the region - approximately 35 projects totaling ~$13B in investment over the next 10 years. This is a newly established and fast-growing team that recently built out a governance framework and is now operationalizing it across the full portfolio. They need a sharp, organized Program Manager to support that effort at the portfolio level, keeping leadership and executives aligned with accurate, polished information.

Key responsibilities

Support facilitation of portfolio governance processes including stage gate reviews, capital approval, KPI management, and risk management

Maintain gate submission checklists and readiness review materials

Implement and manage formal voting processes for gate meetings

Update gate requirements, deliverables, and governance playbook

Develop and maintain documentation control standards - version control, naming conventions, storage locations, and retention policies

Support Executive Steering Committee (SteerCo) meetings - prepare materials, facilitate discussions, and track follow-up actions

Create executive summaries and polished presentation materials

Draft and finalize meeting agendas in collaboration with portfolio leadership

Provide real-time support: slide management, timekeeping, facilitation

Keep portfolio records current - update project list, validate scope, schedule, cost, and risk data across all active and pipeline projects

Monitor and report on action item completion to leadership on a regular cadence

Support ad hoc requests for additional meeting materials and executive reporting

Bachelor's degree - Required

5+ years of program or project management experience - Must be in support of capital portfolios. Senior candidates (15-20+ years) are welcome if they are genuinely interested in this scope of work.

Portfolio-level experience - Must have managed or supported a multi-project portfolio - not just individual projects. The role requires tracking a shifting 10-year pipeline, not just current active work.

Executive-level PowerPoint / presentation creation - Heavy content creation for steering committee and leadership audiences. Must be polished, accurate, and fast.

Strong professional writing and communication skills - Responsible for executive summaries, documentation standards, agendas, meeting minutes, and action logs distributed to senior stakeholders.

Attention to detail / data accuracy - Information produced by this role goes directly to executives and external stakeholders. Errors have high visibility.

Excel proficiency - Must be able to navigate and validate data from spreadsheets - pulling project status, cost, schedule, and risk data across a large portfolio.

Governance / stage gate experience - Stage gate preferred; any structured governance framework (capital approval, tollgate, phase-gate) qualifies. Must understand the rigor behind formal review processes.

Meeting facilitation and action tracking - Experience running cadenced executive or leadership meetings - managing agendas, capturing decisions, and following up on action items.

Capital project industry background

Utilities / high-voltage transmission is ideal. Oil & gas or large, complex capital ($1B+ projects, EPC contract structures) is acceptable.r.

Utility or energy industry background - A plus for candidates from utilities or the Texas energy market. Not a barrier to entry if large capital experience is strong.