Senior Real Estate Planning & Development Program Manager

UL Research Institutes • Evanston, IL

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Real Estate Planning & Development Program Manager leads program planning, controls, and governance for UL Research Institutes’ and UL Standards & Engagement’s complex capital program. This role develops and maintains the program controls framework, coordinates cross-functional teams, and ensures effective governance, decision-making, and stakeholder alignment across internal functions and external partners. UL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement At UL Research Institutes (ULRI) and UL Standards & Engagement (ULSE), we expand the boundaries of safety science to create a more secure and sustainable world. For more than a century, we have studied the unintended consequences of innovation, designed solutions to mitigate risk, created new safety standards and shared our findings with academia, scientists, manufacturers, and policymakers across industries. We identify critical safety and sustainability issues, asking the tough questions because we believe a safer world begins with knowledge.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in real estate, architecture, engineering, construction management, business administration, or a related field.
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in real estate development, capital project delivery, capital program management, owner's representative services, or related fields, including at least 4 years of people leadership and management experience.
• Experience with large, multi-stakeholder capital programs exceeding $100M in value
• Experience developing program controls from the ground up (i.e., master schedules, cost models, risk registers, reporting dashboards)

Nice To Haves

• PMP certification is desired.
• Experience working with scientific research, academic or research institutions, and experience working with public policy, nonprofit, and/or mission driven organizations are desired.

Responsibilities

• Lead planning and development activities for complex real estate and capital projects, translating organizational objectives into program requirements, design criteria, and implementation strategies.
• Manage program staff, consultants, designers, advisors, and delivery partners to ensure achievement of program objectives, contractual obligations, performance expectations, and quality standards.
• Lead program-level planning, controls, and governance across the full capital program lifecycle, ensuring alignment with objectives and requirements.
• Develop and maintain program controls, including integrated master schedules, cost models, risk registers, reporting dashboards, and program status reporting.
• Administer governance processes, including charters, escalation protocols, phase-gate reviews, decision logs, and risk escalation frameworks to support accountability and timely decision-making.
• Establish and maintain compliance processes related to internal policies, contract requirements, funding obligations, approvals, audit readiness, and documentation standards.
• Support contract development, administration, compliance monitoring, and performance management for consultants and service providers.
• Facilitate coordination among internal stakeholders and external partners, driving alignment, documenting decisions, resolving issues, and maintaining program consistency.
• Oversee implementation and optimization of Project Management Information Systems (PMIS), document control workflows, standardized templates, processes, and tools to support scalable program delivery.
• Manage multiple concurrent workstreams, monitoring scope, schedule, cost, risk, and Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR) compliance while ensuring successful program delivery and alignment with priorities.
• Contribute to and/or lead other real estate planning and development–specific and cross‑functional initiatives as needed.

Benefits

• bonus compensation
• comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans
• 401k matching structure of up to 5% of eligible pay
• an additional 4% into your retirement saving fund after your first year of continuous employment
• flexible working arrangements
• paid time off, including vacation, holiday, sick, and volunteer days

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior