Senior Manager - DER

The Senior Manager, Equitable Building Decarbonization (EBD) - Central Region, serves as the primary owner for the strategy, execution, and overall performance of CSE's administration of a large, multi-year building decarbonization initiative funded by the California Energy Commission (CEC). This role leads the full program lifecycle - from planning and implementation readiness through participant enrollment, project delivery, quality assurance, reporting, continuous improvement, and long-term program closeout - while translating program guidelines, contractual requirements, client direction, and organizational strategy into coordinated execution across internal teams, subcontractors, community partners, and program operations.

This is a highly visible leadership role requiring exceptional critical thinking, strategic judgment, structured follow-through, and disciplined relationship management. The Senior Manager must anticipate risks, frame decisions, establish clear ownership, maintain consistent engagement with a dynamic and high-demand client, and ensure that commitments are tracked through completion. The role leads the core EBD program team, including at least two Managers and one Associate Manager, and directly oversees the performance of Franklin Energy as the program's largest subcontractor, along with additional subcontractors and matrixed internal teams.

Success in this role means creating clarity in a complex environment, maintaining control of the program's commitments and communications, and ensuring that plans are converted into measurable, timely, and compliant results.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

Strategic Program Leadership

• Lead the full program lifecycle from strategic planning and implementation readiness through participant enrollment, project delivery, quality assurance, reporting, continuous improvement, and final program closeout, maintaining a clear line of sight from program goals and guidelines to day-to-day priorities, decisions, and deliverables.
• Use sound judgment and critical analysis to identify emerging issues, evaluate tradeoffs, develop options, and recommend a clear path forward before risks become urgent.
• Convert complex or ambiguous client direction into actionable workplans, decision points, accountabilities, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
• Serve as the primary owner for program execution, maintaining accountability for schedule, budget, quality, compliance, participant experience, subcontractor performance, and overall program results.
• Lead course corrections and continuous-improvement efforts when performance, timelines, quality, or program outcomes are off track.
• Lead program-readiness and implementation reviews, including schedule validation, dependency planning, operational risk assessments, delivery-model optimization, and evaluation of whether proposed approaches meet program, contractual, and financial objectives.

Client and Stakeholder Leadership

• Serve as CSE's primary senior day-to-day leader for the CEC EBD Central Region relationship and establish a consistent, credible, and solutions-oriented engagement cadence.
• Prepare concise executive-level updates, decision memos, risk summaries, and recommendations that give the client visibility into program status and next steps.
• Prepare executive-level reporting on program schedules, budgets, forecasts, subcontractor and commercial performance, quality, participant delivery, and program risks, with clear decisions, owners, and next steps.
• Maintain structured follow-through across meetings, decisions, commitments, approvals, and open questions, including clear documentation of owners and due dates.
• Provide early notice of material risks and pair escalation with practical mitigation options, recommended decisions, and a recovery plan.
• Build and sustain productive relationships with the CEC, 1st tier subcontractor, quality-assurance partners, community-based organizations, contractors, and other program stakeholders.

Subcontractor and Partner Management

• Manage all aspects of CSE's relationship with our 1st tier subcontractor, including commercial and performance discussions, milestone and schedule oversight, change management, invoicing, data quality, issue resolution, corrective action, and sustained follow-through on commitments.
• Ensure subcontractor commitments are specific, documented, measurable, and actively tracked to completion.
• Hold regular performance reviews and working sessions with subcontractors to validate status, surface dependencies, resolve barriers, and maintain alignment with CSE and CEC expectations.
• Coordinate closely with CSE's legal, finance, procurement, accounting, policy, data, marketing, equity, platform-development, and project-management teams, as well as additional subcontractors and community partners, so that outreach, eligibility, enrollment, assessments, installations, QA/QC, reporting, and participant support operate as an integrated delivery system.
• Escalate recurring or material performance concerns promptly and manage corrective-action plans through sustained resolution.

Team Leadership and Accountability

• Lead, coach, and develop a core team consisting of at least two Managers and one Associate Manager, with clear roles, decision rights, performance expectations, and development goals.
• Create a culture of ownership, proactive communication, critical thinking, and reliable execution rather than task-following or passive escalation.
• Establish operating rhythms that support effective delegation, workload management, cross-functional coordination, and timely decision-making.
• Ensure managers understand not only what must be delivered, but why it matters, how success will be measured, and when leadership intervention is required.
• Address performance gaps promptly, fairly, and constructively while recognizing strong performance and building leadership capacity across the team.

Program Controls, Visibility, and Execution

• Establish and maintain a disciplined management system for schedules, budgets, forecasts, deliverables, dependencies, risks, decisions, action items, change control, and long-running communications.
• Ensure consistent use of project-management systems, trackers, dashboards, meeting records, shared documentation, and standard operating procedures.
• Maintain high visibility into program performance through accurate status reporting, leading indicators, production metrics, financial reporting, and exception-based management.
• Ensure program guidelines, contract requirements, CEC processes, billing nodes, reporting obligations, and document-retention requirements are understood and followed.
• Validate that information presented to CSE leadership, the client, and partners is accurate, complete, current, and appropriately contextualized.

Financial, Contractual, and Compliance Oversight

• Own overall program budget performance, forecasting, resource alignment, procurement coordination, commercial performance, and financial risk management in partnership with program managers, accounting, finance, legal, and organizational leadership.
• Oversee monthly invoicing, expense reporting, labor tracking, cost corrections, subcontractor invoices, and ECAMS submissions to support timely, accurate, and compliant reimbursement.
• Monitor administrative and project-cost constraints, funding-source requirements, and contract limits; initiate corrective action when spending, scope, or performance trends create risk.
• Ensure annual reports, monthly progress reports, presentations, plans, and other formal deliverables are complete, accurate, persuasive, and submitted on time.
• Coordinate closely with legal, finance, procurement, PMO, policy, data, marketing, equity, platform-development, and other internal teams to resolve cross-functional issues, support program readiness, and ensure successful delivery against technical, financial, contractual, and client objectives.

Program Outcomes and Continuous Improvement

• Keep the organization focused on measurable program outcomes, including lead generation, applicant conversion, eligibility and enrollment, assessments, installation throughput, quality, participant experience, and equitable community impact.
• Use data and operational evidence to diagnose performance gaps, test assumptions, and prioritize interventions.
• Ensure lessons learned from outreach, enrollment, delivery, QA/QC, participant feedback, and subcontractor performance are translated into process improvements.
• Support coordination with related programs and funding sources while preventing duplication of benefits and unnecessary participant complexity.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with the CEC, 1st tier subcontractor, community-based organizations, contractors, consultants, utilities, local jurisdictions, labor stakeholders, other regional administrators, and complementary program partners. Represent the program in internal leadership forums, client meetings, critical project reviews, public presentations, periodic field or partner visits, and other high-visibility settings.

QUALIFICATIONS

Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

Required

• Demonstrated success leading complex, multi-year programs through planning, implementation, active delivery, performance stabilization, and closeout, with significant budgets, formal contractual requirements, multiple concurrent workstreams, and external partners or subcontractors.
• Proven ability to think strategically, make sound decisions with incomplete information, anticipate downstream impacts, and convert ambiguity into an executable plan.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complex information for executives, clients, partners, and operational teams.
• Strong record of building accountability systems, managing commitments, documenting decisions, and sustaining follow-through over long program timelines.
• Strong understanding of integrated scheduling, budgeting, forecasting, procurement, contract administration, change management, risk management, quality oversight, stakeholder coordination, and executive reporting.
• Advanced proficiency with project-management, collaboration, reporting, and document-management systems.

Preferred

• Demonstrated experience leading or administering programs comparable in scale, structure, and public-accountability requirements to the CEC Equitable Building Decarbonization Direct Install Program, particularly regional or statewide energy, building decarbonization, residential retrofit, income-qualified, or equity-focused programs delivered through public-agency oversight, major implementation subcontractors, community-based organizations, and cross-functional partners.
• Direct experience with the California Energy Commission is highly preferred, especially managing a CEC-funded program, delivering work under CEC oversight, working directly with CEC staff and processes, or leading a program subject to comparable CEC reporting, compliance, contracting, and stakeholder expectations.
• Knowledge of residential retrofit delivery, community-based outreach, participant enrollment, contractor networks, permitting, QA/QC, consumer protection, workforce requirements, CRM platforms, data integrations, and complex reporting systems.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in business, public administration, energy, environmental studies, engineering, project management, or a related field; equivalent directly relevant experience may be considered.

Experience:

• At least three years operating at a Senior Manager level or above responsible for program, project, operations, implementation, or client-management experience, including leadership of complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.
• At least three years of direct people-management experience, including management of managers and professional staff.

Licenses, Certificates or Registrations:

• PMP Certification or equivalent preferred.