Site Development & Facilities Programs Lead

Coherent; Sherman (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Coherent is seeking a Senior Program Leader to drive complex facility-development, expansion, and infrastructure programs in Sherman, Texas. You will direct planning, execution, and integration across engineering, permitting, procurement, and operations to ensure manufacturing readiness and alignment with business goals.

Responsibilities include liaison with municipalities and external stakeholders, managing regulatory approvals, and developing mitigation plans to protect program milestones.

Qualifications

Responsibilities

• Lead the planning and execution of complex facility-development, expansion, and infrastructure programs involving multiple concurrent and interdependent workstreams.
• Establish clear program objectives, responsibilities, decision paths, priorities, and execution plans.
• Ensure program objectives align with manufacturing requirements, capacity needs, operational priorities, and broader business goals.
• Translate complex technical, regulatory, municipal, and business requirements into clear decisions and executable actions.
• Identify and remove barriers that could affect cost, schedule, facility readiness, or operational ramp.
• Lead facility and infrastructure due diligence, including land use, zoning, platting, easements, civil design, drainage, structural considerations, environmental requirements, utilities, fire and life safety, and permitting.
• Serve as a primary liaison with municipalities, authorities having jurisdiction, utility providers, economic-development organizations, property owners, developers, consultants, and other external stakeholders.
• Coordinate regulatory approvals involving building modifications, hazardous materials, wastewater, environmental permitting, fire code, inspections, and certificates of occupancy.
• Establish permitting and approval strategies, track commitments, and resolve issues that could delay construction, occupancy, equipment installation, or manufacturing readiness.
• Evaluate facility and infrastructure constraints early enough to support sound business and capital decisions.
• Support economic-development and incentive activities by coordinating external stakeholders, commitments, documentation, and execution requirements with the internal program owner.
• Develop and maintain an integrated program execution plan encompassing engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, equipment installation, permitting, and operational readiness.
• Partner with project management and controls teams to align detailed schedules, forecasts, milestones, risks, and dependencies with overall program objectives.
• Coordinate sequencing across facility, infrastructure, equipment, manufacturing, EHS, IT, security, and operational workstreams.
• Identify critical-path activities, resource constraints, external dependencies, and schedule conflicts.
• Evaluate the program-level impact of scope changes, procurement delays, construction challenges, regulatory issues, and changing business priorities.
• Develop mitigation and recovery plans to protect key program milestones.
• Coordination across Facilities Engineering, Equipment Engineering, Manufacturing, Process Engineering, EHS, Procurement, Finance, Legal, Quality, Operations, IT, Security, contractors, consultants, suppliers, and external partners.
• Build strong working relationships across organizational boundaries and create alignment around priorities, milestones, decisions, and deliverables.
• Facilitate program-level reviews that drive decisions, resolve cross-functional issues, and maintain accountability.
• Coordinate contractor, consultant, utility, and vendor activities to ensure work remains aligned with program requirements.
• Provide clear escalation of issues requiring executive decisions or external intervention.
• Monitor overall program performance against scope, schedule, budget, risk, and key milestones.
• Maintain program-level risk registers, issue logs, decision logs, action tracking, and change documentation.
• Ensure major risks have accountable owners, defined mitigation plans, and appropriate executive visibility.
• Develop concise executive dashboards and program-status reports covering program health, schedule, financial performance, critical risks, and required decisions.
• Present program status, emerging risks, and strategic recommendations to site and senior leadership.
• Support data-driven decision-making through analysis of program performance, forecasts, alternatives, and risk exposure.
• Lead business-continuity and infrastructure-resilience programs across facilities and equipment engineering.
• Own the FM Global relationship, including facility risk assessments, recommendations, corrective-action plans, capital requirements, and executive follow-through.
• Lead facility risk-reduction programs addressing infrastructure vulnerabilities and potential interruptions to manufacturing operations.
• Coordinate utility‑reliability and outage‑preparation activities involving power, natural gas, water, sewer, telecom, and other critical services.
• Lead cross-functional after-action reviews following outages or significant facility events and ensure corrective actions.

Job description

Coherent is seeking a Senior Program Leader to drive complex facility-development, expansion, and infrastructure programs in Sherman, Texas. You will direct planning, execution, and integration across engineering, permitting, procurement, and operations to ensure manufacturing readiness and alignment with business goals.

Responsibilities include liaison with municipalities and external stakeholders, managing regulatory approvals, and developing mitigation plans to protect program milestones.