External Interfaces Requirements Manager

SYSTRA Canada is part of the SYSTRA group, an international consulting and engineering group, a world leader in the design of transport infrastructures. SYSTRA Canada is an engineering and consulting firm whose primary focus is to offer transportation solutions, whether for passengers or goods: feasibility studies of building a new railway line, increasing the capacity of the existing infrastructure, privatization of a railway.

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Context

Project Overview:

The ALTO project is a major infrastructure initiative in Canadian history, aiming to develop over 1,000 km of new passenger High-Speed Rail (HSR) service connecting major urban centers, including Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City.

The project requires complex coordination and integration across multiple disciplines and stakeholders, including municipalities, utility owners, railway owners, operators, regulatory authorities, provincial ministries, and other public-sector entities.

Role:

The External Interface Requirements Manager is responsible for planning, coordinating, developing and managing the requirements and deliverables of the External Interfaces team. The role operates as a work-package management function for the external interfaces’ portfolio, ensuring that stakeholder and interface requirements are translated into clear, actionable deliverables and are progressed to agreed quality, schedule and governance requirements.

Working under the direction of the External Interfaces Director, the Manager provides day-to-day leadership of the team’s delivery plan, maintains visibility of progress and dependencies, coordinates inputs from multiple disciplines, and ensures that commitments to project leadership and external stakeholders are supported by a controlled and traceable set of deliverables.

Missions/Main Duties

Key Responsibilities:

·       Own and manage the External Interfaces team’s integrated deliverables plan, including scope, priorities, milestones, dependencies, owners and status.

·       Establish and maintain a structured work-package approach for external interface requirements, deliverables and commitments.

·       Coordinate the development, review, quality control and timely issuance of work plans, interface registers, requirements, stakeholder trackers, action logs, briefing materials, reports and other team deliverables.

·       Translate the External Interfaces strategy and stakeholder needs into clear deliverables, work packages and actionable requirements for the team.

·       Maintain a consolidated view of deliverables across cities, municipalities, ministries, agencies, utilities, third parties and other external organizations, as applicable to the assigned portfolio.

·       Track progress against approved plans, identify slippage or emerging risks, and proactively escalate issues requiring direction or decision.

·       Coordinate inputs from internal technical, engineering, construction, commercial, planning, communications and project management teams to ensure external interface deliverables are complete and aligned.

·       Manage interfaces between individual external stakeholder workstreams to avoid gaps, duplication or conflicting commitments.

·       Lead the preparation of management-level dashboards, progress reports, look-aheads and status updates for the External Interfaces Director and project leadership.

·       Ensure that stakeholder commitments, actions, decisions and requirements are captured, assigned, monitored and closed in a timely manner.

·       Support the External Interfaces Director in preparing for key stakeholder meetings by ensuring that required briefing materials, positions, action lists and supporting information are complete and coordinated.

·       Establish appropriate document control, version control, review cycles and approval pathways for External Interfaces deliverables.

·       Monitor deliverable quality and readiness, ensuring that outputs are fit for purpose before submission or presentation to project leadership or external stakeholders.

·       Maintain forward planning and identify upcoming deliverables, approvals, meetings, submissions and decision points requiring team action.

·       Facilitate regular internal coordination meetings focused on progress, priorities, risks, dependencies and upcoming commitments.

·       Drive continuous improvement of External Interfaces processes, templates, reporting tools and delivery methods.

Requirements & Interface Management

·       Develop and maintain a clear hierarchy and traceability between external stakeholder requirements, interface commitments, internal actions and resulting deliverables.

·       Coordinate the capture, validation, allocation and monitoring of external interface requirements across relevant project teams.

·       Ensure requirements are sufficiently defined to support action, including ownership, due dates, dependencies, status and required approvals.

·       Identify conflicts, gaps, ambiguities or changes in requirements and coordinate their resolution with the appropriate technical or project authority.

·       Support change management by assessing the implications of new or changing external requirements on scope, schedule, deliverables and stakeholder commitments.

Approvals, Decisions, and Escalation

·       Establish and maintain a strategic stakeholder approvals and commitments tracker.

·       Track decisions, approvals, dependencies, open actions, and escalation items required from strategic stakeholders.

·       Define escalation pathways for unresolved, sensitive, or time-critical matters and support timely resolution through the appropriate governance channels.

·       Ensure stakeholder decisions are documented, traceable, and communicated to relevant project functions.

·       Contribute to decision-making at project leadership level by presenting clear options, recommendations, risks, and required actions.

Risk and Issue Management

·       Identify strategic stakeholder risks, including approval delays, policy misalignment, utility constraints, jurisdictional issues, conflicting stakeholder priorities, reputational sensitivities, and unresolved commitments.

·       Develop mitigation strategies in coordination with project leadership, legal/commercial teams, communications teams, and discipline leads.

·       Support risk workshops and executive reviews related to strategic stakeholder matters.

·       Provide early warning of stakeholder issues that may affect schedule, cost, scope, approvals or delivery strategy.

·       Ensure stakeholder risks and issues are integrated into the project’s formal risk and issue management processes.

Reporting and Governance

·       Develop regular stakeholder status reports for project leadership.

·       Provide concise updates on key relationships, open issues, required decisions, upcoming meetings, escalation items, commitments, and approvals.

·       Contribute to project governance forums, leadership briefings, external interface reviews, and strategic coordination meetings.

·       Ensure stakeholder records, meeting minutes, action logs, correspondence, decisions, and approvals are maintained in accordance with project governance requirements.

·       Support continuous improvement of stakeholder management processes, tools, and reporting practices.

Profile/Skills

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, project management or a related discipline; equivalent experience may be considered.
• Typically 15-20 years of relevant experience in infrastructure, transportation, major projects, stakeholder management, requirements management, interface management or project delivery.
• Experience managing complex, multi-disciplinary deliverables or work packages within a major project environment.
• Experience working with government, municipalities, public agencies or other external stakeholders is strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of project controls, requirements management, interface management, document control and governance processes.
• Experience with integrated work planning, reporting and progress tracking.
• Bilingual: English and French strongly preferred.

Skills and Competencies

• Strong leadership, diplomacy, and relationship management skills.
• Ability to operate effectively at both executive and technical levels.
• Excellent communication, briefing, writing, presentation, and issue-framing skills.
• Ability to structure complex stakeholder problems and drive them toward resolution.
• Ability to manage multiple senior stakeholders with competing priorities.
• Strong judgment and ability to handle confidential, sensitive, or reputationally significant matters.
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to commitments, actions, decisions, and approvals.
• Collaborative mindset with the ability to align technical, commercial, legal, communications, and executive teams.

SYSTRA Canada is committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer that values applications from all and offers employment equity based on the merits and abilities of candidates and personnel.

Note: In this description, the masculine gender is used for easy reading purposes and includes the feminine.

We use AI-enabled tools in our recruitment platform (iCIMS) for tasks like resume parsing and candidate matching. These tools do not make hiring decisions; all applications are reviewed by a human recruiter, and final decisions are made by our hiring team.

For questions about our hiring process or AI tools, please contact [email protected] .

Workplace Type

Hybrid

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