Project Risk Manager Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Work Arrangement: Primarily On-Site
Employment: Full-Time

We are seeking an experienced Senior Project Risk Manager to support the Advanced Light Source Upgrade (ALS-U), a major technically complex capital project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California.

The Senior Project Risk Manager will lead and administer the project's integrated risk-management program, providing senior leadership with independent, objective, and decision-ready information regarding technical, cost, schedule, procurement, installation, operational, organizational, and external project risks and opportunities.

This role requires significant experience managing risk within large capital projects, scientific facilities, infrastructure programs, construction programs, aerospace/defense programs, or similarly complex technical environments.

The position is expected to be performed primarily on-site at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory due to frequent interaction with project leadership, technical teams, Project Controls, Control Account Managers (CAMs), functional leads, and risk owners. Limited remote work may be authorized for appropriate analytical and documentation activities.

• Lead and administer the integrated project risk-management program.
• Maintain and periodically update the Risk Management Plan, supporting procedures, risk taxonomy, scoring criteria, and governance processes.
• Maintain the project risk register and associated configuration-controlled records.
• Serve as a senior advisor to project leadership regarding risk-management matters.
• Facilitate Risk Management Board meetings, risk workshops, focused reviews, and risk deep dives.
• Identify and escalate unresolved, inadequately managed, or increasing project risks.
• Ensure risk assumptions, ownership, mitigation commitments, and decisions are clearly documented and traceable.

• Facilitate project-wide and subsystem-level risk-identification activities.
• Develop high-quality risk statements identifying causal events, affected conditions, and potential consequences.
• Evaluate technical, schedule, cost, procurement, vendor, installation, commissioning, staffing, logistics, funding, and external risks.
• Identify systemic, cross-cutting, correlated, and compounding risks across the program.
• Maintain complete and current risk information within Safran Risk Manager or another approved risk-management system.
• Reconcile risk assumptions with project schedules, cost estimates, procurement plans, technical maturity, staffing plans, and change-control activities.

• Develop and maintain integrated quantitative cost and schedule risk-analysis models.
• Perform Monte Carlo simulations, sensitivity analyses, scenario analyses, estimate-uncertainty analyses, schedule-uncertainty analyses, and confidence-level assessments.
• Evaluate probability distributions, cost and schedule impacts, correlation assumptions, mitigation assumptions, and risk-retirement timing.
• Coordinate with Project Controls to integrate risks with Primavera P6 schedules, milestones, cost estimates, control accounts, critical paths, schedule margin, and contingency forecasts.
• Assess cost and schedule contingency adequacy.
• Analyze and communicate principal risk drivers, assumptions, limitations, sensitivities, and changes in project exposure.
• Support baseline changes, recovery plans, acceleration strategies, funding scenarios, independent cost reviews, and external reviews.

• Assist risk owners with development of specific, measurable, time-phased mitigation plans.
• Track mitigation commitments, trigger conditions, milestones, due dates, effectiveness measures, and residual exposure.
• Identify overdue, stalled, ineffective, or inadequately resourced mitigation actions.
• Evaluate whether mitigation strategies are likely to reduce probability and/or impact as intended.
• Maintain accountability and visibility regarding overall project risk posture.

• Prepare concise, defensible monthly risk reports and executive-level briefings.
• Present risk information to project leadership, technical teams, Laboratory management, government representatives, and external review committees.
• Communicate changes in risk exposure, emerging risks, mitigation performance, and contingency implications.
• Maintain auditable documentation supporting risk acceptance, mitigation commitments, model assumptions, ownership changes, and risk-retirement decisions.
• Support management reviews, change-control activities, rebaseline documentation, forecasting, and other project decision packages.

The Advanced Light Source Upgrade is a major upgrade to the existing Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The project involves highly integrated technical systems, procurement, fabrication, installation, testing, commissioning, and transition-to-operations activities.

The successful candidate will work closely with project leadership, Project Controls, engineering and technical teams, Control Account Managers, functional leads, risk owners, Laboratory management, and external stakeholders.

This position is ideal for a senior risk professional who is comfortable operating at both the analytical and executive levels—someone capable of building quantitative risk models while also translating the results into clear, actionable information for project decision-makers.

Requirements

Required

• 8+ years of progressively responsible safety/EHS experience supporting construction, installation, industrial, research, or other complex technical projects.
• Demonstrated experience performing safety-management functions on large construction or complex technical projects.
• Demonstrated experience with hazard identification/risk assessment, JHAs/AHAs/AHDs or equivalent, Work Planning and Control, field safety oversight, incident investigation/corrective actions, and safety documentation.
• Working knowledge of OSHA and other applicable federal/state occupational and construction safety requirements.
• Experience working collaboratively with engineering, project management, contractors/subcontractors and technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Occupational Safety, Industrial Hygiene, Engineering, Environmental/Physical Sciences or related discipline OR an equivalent combination of education, specialized training and relevant professional experience.

Preferred

• DOE O 413.3B or comparable project-governance experience.
• DOE/national laboratory experience.
• Accelerator, nuclear, research-facility or other highly regulated technical-environment experience.
• Experience with radiological, lead, hazardous-material, electrical, lifting/rigging, confined-space and construction hazards.
• Design/engineering safety review experience.
• Readiness review/commissioning experience.
• CSP, CIH, CHST, ASP, PE or comparable professional credential.
• OSHA 30/510/500 or comparable advanced construction-safety training.