Welcome to AALTO, a global leader in Stratospace. Based in Farnborough, AALTO is an Airbus subsidiary that manufactures, operates, and delivers services with its solar-powered, stratospheric platform: Zephyr.

Zephyr’s persistence enables continuous flight for months at a time. Its current flight-time record of over 67 days in the stratosphere. From above 60,000+ft, or 20km above ground, AALTO can deliver several applications including direct-to-device connectivity and high-resolution Earth observation.

AALTO operates in a new operational layer between most of air traffic and low-Earth orbit, Stratospace. This is where high-altitude platforms led by Zephyr deliver services to commercial and government partners. We can help monitor environments, observe borders, track natural disasters and connect unconnected communities.

Join us as we create a new domain of aerospace: Stratospace. You’ll be part of a highly-skilled, innovative and passionate group of people – Team AALTO. Together, we can Unlock Stratospace.

Job Purpose:

You will be part of the Programme Management Office (PMO), responsible for working collaboratively across the organisation to create and update the programme schedules and support the reporting requirements to enable the successful delivery into service of Zephyr Products (Aircraft, Ground Systems, Payloads, and Service Management Systems), enabling world leading stratospheric solutions.

We are seeking a highly organised, data driven, and detail-oriented individual with strong communication skills to join our PMO team. The Project Controls Assistant will play a crucial role developing our reporting capabilities, updating the programme schedule to provide visibility of progress and enable efficient management of costs, risks and issues.

The Project Controls Assistant will be responsible for maintaining the programme schedule, supporting and maintaining reporting requirements using Power BI, and providing regular input to the monthly reporting cycle including Programme Review Meetings.

This is a fixed-term contract role through to the end of December 2025. There is a strong likelihood of the position becoming permanent in early 2026, subject to business needs

Responsibilities:

Project Planning

• Liaison across the business to maintain the programme schedule, monitoring and reporting against milestones and activities, maintaining baselines, identifying trends, providing critical path analysis etc.
• Programme schedule analysis to validate critical paths and interdependencies.
• Scenario planning for options consideration and delay mitigation, establishing sequence, durations and options for projects as required.
• Cross functional collaborative working to enable alignment on programme targets, timing plan, and resource allocation.

Risk & Opportunity Management

• Support Risk and Opportunity Management by the identification of Risk and mitigations with the relevant disciplines, identification of possible opportunities and the creation of internal and external reports.

Project Communication and Reporting and Analysis

• Develop and maintain integrated reports capturing Schedule, Risks, Opportunities, commentary etc. in Power BI, using Power Automate and other tools as required to enable automation and efficiencies.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify areas for process improvement and actively contribute to the development and implementation of best practises.
• Embrace digital transformation and automation to streamline processes and bring efficiencies.
• Contribute to documenting PMO processes, procedures and work instructions.

Experience and Qualifications:

• Qualified to degree level, or equivalent working experience, and holding or working towards a relevant industry association membership (e.g. APM)
• Proven experience in delivering project planning aligned to industry standards. Experience using Planning software essential, preferably MS Project and Project Online.
• Strong understanding and evidence of data management. Experience using / developing Power BI Reports, using Power Automate would be an advantage. Willingness to learn essential.
• Excellent IT skills (MS Office suite) especially Excel.
• Minimum 5 years’ experience working in aviation environment required.

Personal Attributes:

• Proactive with a continuous improvement mindset.
• Excellent communication skills with ability to forge relationships across cross-functional teams and ability to work autonomously.

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