Senior Portfolio Planner

Defence | Complex Programmes | High‑Integrity Delivery We're looking for a Senior Portfolio Planner to take ownership of building, maintaining, and analysing fully integrated programme schedules across multiple workstreams, suppliers, and stakeholders. You'll be central to how the programme understands progress, risk, and delivery confidence ensuring schedule data is accurate, insightful, and aligned to critical defence outcomes. This role suits someone who thrives in a regulated, fast‑moving environment, is comfortable handling large volumes of complex data, and brings deep scheduling expertise to programme controls, governance, and decision‑making. What you'll be doing

• Developing and managing integrated master schedules in Microsoft Project.
• Building detailed schedules across engineering, procurement, manufacturing, testing, integration, and delivery.
• Ensuring schedules are logically linked, resource‑loaded where required, and aligned to programme milestones and governance.
• Tracking schedule performance, critical paths, float, dependencies, risks, and progress updates.
• Producing clear, data‑driven schedule reports, dashboards, and performance metrics for leadership.
• Supporting programme reviews, planning workshops, and governance forums with accurate schedule intelligence.
• Analysing complex datasets to identify trends, variances, risks, and opportunities.
• Generating ad‑hoc reporting to support programme decision‑making.
• Working closely with PMs, work package leads, engineering, commercial, and suppliers to maintain schedule integrity.
• Supporting change control and assessing schedule impacts from programme changes.
• Applying consistent scheduling standards, processes, and best practice across the programme.
• Contributing to wider programme controls including risk, cost, and resource integration. Who you are
• Extensive experience as a Programme Scheduler / Project Planner on large, complex programmes.
• Background in defence, aerospace, engineering, or other regulated environments.
• Advanced Microsoft Project capability, including:
• Integrated master scheduling
• Critical path analysis
• Baseline and dependency management
• Progress tracking and reporting
• Strong analytical capability with experience handling complex programme data.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Highly structured, detail‑driven, and methodical.
• Comfortable coordinating inputs from multiple disciplines and suppliers.
• Experienced in programme governance and reporting cycles. Desirable
• Experience on government or defence programmes with security/compliance requirements.
• Familiarity with Earned Value Management (EVM).
• Knowledge of programme controls and integrated planning methodologies.
• Understanding of engineering and systems integration lifecycles.
• Experience working with suppliers/subcontractors in complex delivery environments.