Associate Director, Project Controls

Associate Director, Project Controls

Location: Portsmouth, NH, USA. Relocation and assistance available for eligible candidates and their families if needed.

Travel Note: Regional and international travel is required up to 20% to support portfolio governance and site alignments.

We are seeking an elite, highly analytical project controls and commercial management professional to join our Global Engineering team as the Associate Director, Project Controls. Reporting directly to the US Project Controls Lead, this senior position is responsible for leading all project controls functions across a high-complexity portfolio of major capital expense (CAPEX) programs and large growth investment projects (typically exceeding $100M+). Operating under general direction with broad autonomy, you will establish rigorous governance, drive integrated reporting, and deliver data-driven insights post-CAR approval. This role serves as a key organizational anchor—collaborating with multi-million dollar program leaders, guiding a specialized team of internal and external controls specialists, and protecting site execution budgets, schedules, and strategic corporate objectives.

What will you get?

• An agile career and dynamic working culture
• An inclusive and ethical workplace
• Compensation programs that recognize high performance
• Medical, dental and vision insurance, as well as PTO and more
• Our full list of global benefits can be found here:

What you'll do:

• Process Governance & Architecture: Establish, govern, and continuously optimize integrated cost, schedule, risk, and change management processes across multiple major projects and large capital programs.
• Project Performance Support: Act as the primary strategic partner to Project Leads (PLs) during delivery, executing advanced cost and schedule controls to maintain target project performance baselines.
• Schedule Risk & Critical Path Management: Oversee the development, verification, and governance of complex, integrated project schedules (Levels 1–4), ensuring rigorous critical path analysis and quantified schedule risk modeling.
• Advanced Cost Control Execution: Lead comprehensive financial cost control operations, including multi-million dollar budgeting, deep Estimate-at-Completion (EAC) forecasting, accrual validations, and robust variance analyses.
• Project Change Control Governance: Manage and vet Project Change Orders (PCOs), ruthlessly evaluating their cumulative cost, timeline schedule, and commercial risk impacts before escalation.
• Contractor Commercial Management: Monitor third-party and contractor performance against contractual commitments, spearheading commercial validation activities such as GMP/GMAX contract reviews and complex invoice audits.
• Integrated Reporting & Data Insights: Deliver transparent, highly accurate executive-level reporting that details cost/schedule KPIs, emerging trends, deviations, and cashflow projections to enable proactive senior management decision-making.
• Cross-Functional System Alignment: Drive total execution alignment between construction sequences, commissioning schedules, and final Validation (CQV) milestones across all site stakeholders.
• Team Leadership & Development: Directly manage and mentor a dedicated project controls squad consisting of 2–4 direct reports and up to 10 indirect internal and external/contingent workers.

What we're looking for:

• Experience: 15+ years of deep, advanced project controls management experience within a highly regulated environment (pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or chemical processing industries highly preferred). Proven history of success managing controls for large-scale capital portfolios exceeding $100M+.
• Technical & Digital System Mastery: Strong digital platform proficiency with deep working knowledge of enterprise capital management and scheduling tools—including Primavera (P6), Unifier, SAP, and advanced data manipulation applications (Excel pivot tables, macros).
• Analytical & Commercial Savvy: Niche analytical skillset linking complex, multi-disciplinary technical engineering understandings to definitive financial project goals, risk quantified models, and commercial outcomes.
• Matrix Influence & Soft Skills: Solid collaboration and influencing capabilities to guide cross-functional leadership teams (Finance, Procurement, Operations, Automation) and interact seamlessly with executive stakeholders.
• Education: Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Finance, Business, or a related Scientific discipline is required. A Master's Degree in an engineering or business discipline is highly preferred.
• Attributes: Proactive communicator who thrives within fast-paced environments, actively manages ambiguity, balances shifting organizational priorities, and takes absolute personal accountability for team outcomes.

About Lonza

At Lonza, our people are our greatest strength. With 30+ sites across five continents, our globally connected teams work together every day to manufacture the medicines of tomorrow. Our core values of Collaboration, Accountability, Excellence, Passion and Integrity reflect who we are and how we work together. Everyone's ideas, big or small, have the potential to improve millions of lives, and that's the kind of work we want you to be part of.

Innovation thrives when people from all backgrounds bring their unique perspectives to the table. At Lonza, we offer equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you're ready to help turn our customers' breakthrough ideas into viable therapies, we look forward to welcoming you on board.

Ready to shape the future of life sciences? Apply now.