Senior Manager: Design & Interface📣 Job Ad

About Parsons Corporation

Parsons Corporation is seeking an experienced Senior Manager: Design & Interface to support its growing team in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Parsons cultivates an innovative culture guided by a vision of valuing people, embracing agility, and fostering growth.

The Role: Senior Manager, Design & Interface

The Senior Manager: Design & Interface operates as an integrated, client-facing role within a Project Management Consultancy (PMC). This full-time position is responsible for managing and assuring the end-to-end design and interface coordination process across multiple disciplines and packages, such as civil, stations, systems, MEP, and rolling stock. The role emphasizes engineering governance, interface management, and safety assurance rather than operations. Acting on behalf of the client, the manager ensures that all designers, contractors, and systems integrators deliver coordinated, safe, and compliant designs and constructed works that meet employer’s requirements, statutory obligations, and project objectives for scope, time, cost, and quality.

Key Responsibilities in Design Management

• Serve as the primary PMC focal point for design coordination across the program.
• Represent the client in high-level design and coordination meetings with consultants, contractors, systems integrators, authorities, and third parties.
• Ensure employer’s requirements, technical standards, and safety obligations are clearly communicated, understood, and implemented by all delivery partners.
• Provide independent, objective advice and recommendations to client leadership on engineering, safety, interface, and program matters.
• Lead and manage the overall multi-discipline design process (concept, preliminary, detailed, and IFC) across architectural, civil/structural, MEP, rail systems, and other disciplines.
• Review and comment on key design submissions, technical reports, drawings, models, calculations, and specifications to ensure compliance with employer’s requirements, project standards, applicable local regulations, authority requirements, and relevant international standards.
• Chair and coordinate design review workshops, value engineering sessions, and constructability reviews.
• Oversee requirements management and traceability, ensuring all technical and safety requirements are properly captured, allocated, and verified.
• Monitor and enforce adherence to the project’s technical assurance and design governance processes.
• Manage alignment between design deliverables and construction methodology/sequencing.
• Support the client in assessing and approving design changes, technical deviations, and value engineering proposals, including impact on safety, schedule, cost, and interfaces.
• Ensure consistent application of configuration management across design and construction phases.
• Coordinate closure of design-related non-conformances, technical queries, and RFIs.
• Monitor design activities against the integrated master program and key milestones.
• Maintain and regularly update design risk registers, identifying mitigation measures and contingency plans.
• Provide clear, concise reports, dashboards, and presentations for the client covering design progress and key risks.
• Support project controls teams in assessing schedule and cost impacts of design issues and changes.
• Coordinate with internal client stakeholders to ensure design outcomes meet future operational and business needs.
• Interface with local authorities, utility providers, and other third parties to support approvals, NOCs, permits, and technical agreements.
• Facilitate cross-discipline alignment among multiple design consultants, contractors, and suppliers.
• Lead and mentor a team of design managers, interface engineers, and safety/assurance specialists within the PMC.
• Promote a culture of quality, safety, collaboration, and proactive risk management across all design and interface activities.
• Ensure robust QA/QC processes are applied to design deliverables.
• Capture, document, and disseminate lessons learned in design.

Interface Coordination and Safety Assurance

• Establish and manage the project-wide interface management framework, including processes, tools, and responsibilities.
• Identify, classify, and maintain a register of all key interfaces (*, civil–systems, stations–MEP, systems–rolling stock, depots, third-party utilities).
• Chair interface coordination meetings and interface control working groups, driving resolution of interface issues.
• Review and monitor interface control documents, interface matrices, and interface agreements prepared by designers and contractors.
• Ensure interface assumptions and decisions are documented, communicated, and implemented consistently across contracts.
• Escalate critical interface risks and conflicts to the client with options and recommendations.
• Oversee, from a PMC perspective, the integration of engineering and safety requirements throughout the design and build phases.
• Review and monitor RAMS documentation, safety cases, hazard logs, and risk assessments prepared by contractors and consultants.
• Ensure design solutions incorporate safety by design, including construction safety, operational safety, and maintainability considerations.
• Coordinate with independent safety assessors (ISA), regulators, and third-party reviewers, consolidating findings and actions for the client.
• Verify that all required safety approvals, certifications, and authority clearances are planned, tracked, and obtained in line with project milestones.
• Monitor interface activities against the integrated master program and key milestones.
• Maintain and regularly update interface and safety risk registers.
• Provide clear, concise reports, dashboards, and presentations for the client covering interface status and safety issues.
• Support project controls teams in assessing schedule and cost impacts of interface issues.
• Ensure robust QA/QC processes are applied to interface documentation.
• Capture, document, and disseminate lessons learned in interface management and safety assurance.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Approximately 15 years’ experience in major infrastructure, rail/transit, or complex multi-discipline projects, with a strong emphasis on design management and interface coordination.
• Significant experience in a PMC, client, or international consultancy role managing design and build contracts.
• Proven track record leading multi-discipline design teams and managing interfaces between civil, MEP, systems, and third-party stakeholders.
• Demonstrable experience in engineering assurance, safety by design, and RAMS safety case processes.
• Experience working on large programs with multiple contractors and packages, ideally including rail/metro or similarly complex environments.

Location and Work Type

This is a full-time position based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The salary for this role is not disclosed.