Head of Portfolio Control in Portsmouth

Salary: £80,000 DOE

Full Time Permanent

Who we are:

SubSea Craft is a fast growing, privately-funded, UK-based innovative maritime technology company specialising in next-generation, high-performance watercraft and systems. We operate at the intersection of advanced engineering, cutting‑edge design, and user‑centric innovation, delivering safe, effective, and enabling solutions for both commercial and defence applications.

What we offer:

• Pension Contribution – Pension scheme with the option to contribute via salary sacrifice.
• Annual Bonus Scheme – Eligibility to participate in the company’s annual discretionary bonus scheme, linked to individual and company performance.
• Life Assurance and Critical Illness Cover – Comprehensive protection including Life Assurance (4x salary) and Critical Illness Cover for added financial security.
• Annual Leave – Entitlement to 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays.
• Christmas Leave – A Christmas shutdown is typically observed.
• Wellbeing Day – An additional Wellbeing Day each year to focus on personal health and wellbeing.
• Family Leave – Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.
• Private Healthcare – Access to comprehensive private healthcare coverage to support your physical and mental wellbeing.
• Professional Development – Commitment to ongoing learning and career growth, supported by training programmes and access to LinkedIn Learning.
• Flexible Working – Opportunities for flexible working arrangements to promote work‑life balance.
• Inclusive Culture – A professional environment that values diversity, innovation, and collaboration.

Role Overview:

The Head of Portfolio Control will lead the central Portfolio Control Team, acting as the focal point for planning, coordination, and performance reporting across the business portfolio. The role will ensure that all approved activity is centrally governed, coherently planned, and transparently reported, providing the executive team with a single source of truth for delivery status, resourcing, cost and risk. The Head of Portfolio Control will drive the development of an integrated planning and governance capability that supports portfolio‑level decision making, scenario analysis, and prioritisation. The team will function as a central planning “tiger team”, coordinating resource allocation, programme interdependencies, schedule integration, and risk management across projects. The role will be of strategic importance and will report into the Operations Director.

Responsibilities:

• Leading the Portfolio Control Team to deliver centralised planning, coordination, and reporting across the business portfolio.
• Acting as the central authority for portfolio‑level governance, ensuring alignment between approved activities, strategic priorities, and execution plans.
• Developing and maintaining an integrated master schedule and resource view across programmes and projects.
• Owning portfolio‑level reporting, providing concise and accurate performance updates to the executive team.
• Driving scenario planning and “big‑handful” costing to support strategic decision making and prioritisation.
• Ensuring risks, assumptions, and dependencies are identified, managed, and escalated at portfolio level.
• Coordinating cross‑functional planning activities to ensure coherent execution across engineering, operations, finance, and commercial teams.
• Monitoring resource allocation and organisational capacity, supporting optimisation against strategic priorities.
• Acting as the central source of truth for portfolio status, delivery performance, and forward planning.
• Establishing and continuously improving portfolio governance processes within the business management systems.
• Providing leadership to scheduling, risk, and financial analysis capability within the Portfolio Control.
• Ensuring impact analysis and sensitivity analysis is accurate.
• Supporting Directors and C‑suite stakeholders with rapid analysis of project opportunities, risks, and delivery implications.
• Deputising for the Operations Director across the wider Operations function when required.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Extensive experience in Portfolio, Programme Governance, or P3O leadership roles.
• Strong background in integrated planning, portfolio reporting, and governance frameworks.
• Experience operating within manufacturing, technology development, maritime, or complex engineering environments.
• Sound understanding of financial analytics, including ROI, opportunity cost principles, and their application in portfolio decision‑making.
• Good understanding of project accounting methodologies and their impact on programme performance and reporting.
• Proven experience developing integrated master schedules and resource planning models.
• Experience with portfolio‑level risk management and scenario planning.
• Strong stakeholder management and executive‑level communication skills.
• Experience working across functions – including engineering, commercial, finance, and operations.
• Excellent attention to detail and analytical capability.
• High level of proficiency with portfolio, programme, and planning software packages.
• Recognised Programme/Portfolio Management qualification (MSP, MoP, PgMP, or equivalent) desirable.

Note:

Due to the nature of work undertaken at SubSea Craft, the selected candidate must be capable of meeting the security requirements of the position, which would include as a minimum existing right to live and work in the UK, Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS), with UK National security clearance required for certain roles.

Values:

Our people are our greatest asset, we continually strive to provide an excellent working environment to enable our team to do their best work. We have an agile professional workforce: we are founded on the belief that our people are valued and our business is trusted, inclusive and commercially‑adept. We are committed to building an inclusive, diverse workplace where everyone can thrive. If you require any support or adjustments to interact with us, please let us know.

What we expect from you:

• Teamwork, mutual respect and collaboration.
• Initiative and independent working.
• Honesty and integrity.
• Business and commercial awareness.
• Agility, adaptability and continuous development.

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