Manager, Strategy and Transformation

Manager, Strategy and Transformation

American Engineering Testing Inc St Paul, Minnesota, United States

American Engineering Testing (AET) is a growing professional services firm specializing in geotechnical engineering, environmental consulting, materials testing, and construction observation. With offices across the Midwest and a talented team of engineers, scientists, and technical professionals, AET serves clients across infrastructure, commercial development, energy, and government sectors.

AET is at an inflection point. We are executing a multi-year enterprise transformation designed to take us from a strong regional firm to a scaled, high-performing organization: standardizing how we deliver work, building the systems and processes that support growth, and developing the leadership capabilities that will define AET for the next decade. This transformation is active and moving. We are looking for someone to help us run it with discipline and precision.

The Manager, Strategy & Transformation role sits at the operational core of AET's organizational transformation. This person will be the execution engine behind the Road to 2030 program, keeping strategic initiatives on track, making the annual planning cycle run smoothly, and ensuring the organization's internal communications are clear, consistent, and well‑timed through a period of significant change.

This role sits at the intersection of program management and organizational change management. The person who thrives here understands that a strategic initiative is not complete when a solution is built — it is complete when the people who need to work differently are actually working differently. They bring the same rigor to change adoption that they bring to milestone tracking: structured, proactive, and accountable to outcomes rather than activities.

The role reports to the VP of Strategy & Growth and collaborates closely with initiative sponsors, project leads, and cross‑functional teams across every part of the organization.

The ideal candidate is a highly adaptable, execution-focused professional with deep experience managing multi‑initiative transformation programs in small to mid‑size organizations. They bring strong change management expertise, the ability to influence without authority, and the judgment to know when to elevate and when to resolve. This role requires both strategic thinking and operational discipline, the ability to frame an executive update in the morning and facilitate a cross‑initiative coordination meeting in the afternoon.

Reasonable accommodations or workable solutions may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

• Own the governance structure that keeps the transformation program running — cross‑initiative coordination cadence, integrated program roadmap, dependency and risk tracking, and the governance calendar across all active initiatives
• Establish and maintain the governance structure with full accountability, cadences, reporting, and decision‑making forums, that keeps AET's transformation initiatives on track
• Translate strategic priorities into clear, actionable execution plans with defined milestones, owners, and dependencies
• Design and facilitate program meetings, prepare pre‑work, follow through on decisions, and ensure the program maintains a consistent, reliable operating rhythm
• Facilitate cross‑initiative coordination to resolve dependencies and conflicts between work streams.
• Hold multiple work streams progress simultaneously, track complex interdependencies, and maintain forward momentum across a long‑horizon program
• Maintain and continuously update the RAID log and program dashboard

• Build trusted working relationships with senior leaders across the organization, influencing outcomes without direct authority.
• Partner with business leads and executive sponsors who own each initiative helping them build realistic work plans, track against milestones, surface risks before they become crises, and drive decisions to closure…