Utility Operations Manager Jobs in Houston, TX (NOW HIRING)

Location: Houston, Texas Downtown office
Job Category: Consulting
Employment Type: Full-Time
Work Model: Hybrid, 3-4 days onsite

Cognizant Consulting is more than Cognizant’s consulting practice. We’re a global community of experts dedicated to helping clients reimagine their businesses through industry, operational, and technology transformation. We partner with leading organisations to solve complex business challenges and create sustainable value through innovative solutions.

As a Senior Consulting Manager - Utilities Vegetation Management Transformation, you will make an impact by advising utility clients on strategic transformation initiatives that improve vegetation management operations, reduce outage risk, strengthen regulatory compliance, improve public safety, and enhance contractor and field crew performance. You will be a valued member of Cognizant Consulting’s Energy & Utilities practice and will collaborate closely with utility leaders, vegetation management teams, distribution operations, field operations, asset management, customer operations, IT, vendors, and client stakeholders.

This role requires a blend of utility domain expertise, business process transformation leadership, technology-enabled operations experience, and executive stakeholder management. You will help clients improve end-to-end vegetation management processes, strengthen operational governance, and use data-driven insights to support reliability, field productivity, and customer outcomes.

• Lead strategic consulting engagements focused on utility vegetation management operations, including current-state assessment, process design, gap analysis, future-state operating model definition, and business capability mapping.
• Partner with vegetation management, distribution operations, field operations, asset management, customer operations, IT, and vendor teams to define and support end-to-end business processes.
• Advise clients on processes covering cycle trimming, hazard tree identification, pre-inspection, work planning, customer notification, permitting, crew scheduling, vegetation trimming and removal, herbicide treatment, quality assurance, work verification, closeout, and reporting.
• Translate business needs into functional requirements, user stories, process flows, data requirements, integration needs, reporting requirements, and operational acceptance criteria.
• Provide subject matter expertise on how vegetation management activities intersect with OMS outage prevention, feeder reliability, circuit prioritisation, asset risk, GIS network data, work order execution, and contractor productivity.
• Support application enhancements, production issues, defects, workflow improvements, data quality remediation, testing, release planning, training, and adoption for vegetation management and related utility platforms.
• Drive alignment between vegetation management programmes and broader distribution operations initiatives, including reliability improvement, storm readiness, emergency response, wildfire or hazard mitigation, and regulatory reporting.
• Facilitate workshops with business users, field supervisors, planners, arborists, contractors, IT architects, product owners, and leadership stakeholders.
• Define KPIs, dashboards, operational reports, and management routines for planned versus completed work, backlog, contractor productivity, quality defects, rework, customer issues, cost performance, clearance compliance, and circuit risk reduction.
• Act as a trusted advisor to utility leadership by identifying opportunities to standardise processes, improve data-driven prioritisation, reduce manual effort, enhance field productivity, and strengthen governance.

We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role’s business requirements, this position requires 3-4 days per week onsite at a Cognizant or client office in Houston, Texas Downtown office.

The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based on the project you’re engaged in, as well as business and client requirements. Rest assured, we will always be clear about role expectations.

• 12+ years of experience in utilities consulting, business analysis, product ownership, solution consulting, or technology delivery for electric, gas, or water utilities.
• 5+ years of experience working with utility field operations, distribution operations, asset and work management, outage management, or vegetation management-related programmes.
• Strong experience in electric utility operations, preferably with exposure to distribution operations, outage management, reliability programmes, asset management, and field workforce execution.
• Experience with vegetation management platforms, work management systems, mobile workforce applications, contractor portals, enterprise asset management systems, GIS platforms, and reporting solutions.
• Working knowledge of SCADA, DMS, OMS, GIS, ADMS, FLISR, VVO, DERMS, and DRMS systems and how these platforms support reliability, situational awareness, and field operations.
• Experience with smart metering and AMI ecosystems, including meter-to-cash impacts, field orders, device events, outage and restoration signals, customer service interactions, and operational analytics.
• Strong understanding of service order management, billing operations, asset lifecycle management, and workforce management systems used by utilities.
• Ability to connect vegetation management processes with outage prevention, feeder performance, momentary interruptions, customer minutes interrupted, circuit reliability indices, and operational risk reduction.
• Experience supporting product enhancements, issue triage, defect analysis, root cause analysis, user acceptance testing, cutover readiness, hypercare, and business adoption.
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Business, Operations Management, Forestry, Environmental Science, or a related discipline.

• Prior experience with a large investor-owned utility, transmission and distribution utility, or managed services or consulting engagement.
• Experience with annual and multi-year vegetation management planning, budget forecasting, region or circuit prioritisation, reliability-based planning, and risk-based work selection.
• Experience with inspection and patrol processes, including field inspection, tree risk assessment, clearance assessment, hazard tree tagging, line patrol, and mobile data capture.
• Knowledge of contractor scheduling, crew assignment, route optimisation, workload balancing, emergency reprioritisation, and seasonal workload planning.
• Experience with data and analytics, including operational dashboards, Power BI or similar BI tools, KPI reporting, field productivity analytics, backlog reporting, spatial analytics, and executive scorecards.
• Experience with Agile delivery, product backlog management, user story development, sprint grooming, release validation, defect management, and stakeholder demos.
• Certifications such as PMP, Agile/Scrum, ITIL, ISA arborist exposure, utility vegetation management training, or GIS certification.

This position is eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive programme, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance
• 401(k) plan and company contributions
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Employee assistance programme
• 10 paid holidays plus paid time off
• Paid parental leave and fertility assistance
• Learning and development certifications and programmes

Applications will be accepted until September 5, 2026.

Cognizant will only consider applicants for this position who are legally authorised to work in the United States without requiring company sponsorship now or in the future.