Director, Project Management Office

Ascent Shared Services LLC is hiring a Director of PMO to lead governance and delivery oversight for its IT project portfolio. The role oversees portfolio intake and prioritization, project financial management, Fusion Team operations, delivery standards, and executive, senior leadership, and Board reporting.

Responsibilities:

• Own and continuously improve the enterprise IT project intake process, ensuring requests have documented objectives, business ownership, expected benefits, estimated cost, capacity needs, dependencies, and decision status
• Facilitate transparent evaluation and prioritization of new requests and the active portfolio with business and IT leaders, considering strategic alignment, business value, urgency, capacity, risk, and financial implications
• Maintain a consolidated, decision-ready portfolio roadmap and prioritized backlog; document approvals, deferrals, trade-offs, and changes in scope or sequence
• Coordinate portfolio capacity and resource conflicts, including cross-platform dependencies; escalate unresolved trade-offs through established governance forums
• Maintain project-level and consolidated IT portfolio financial tracking, including approved budgets, commitments, actual spend, forecast-to-complete, and estimated total cost at completion
• Partner with Finance, IT leaders, and project owners to reconcile expenditures, validate forecasts, analyze budget variances, and identify potential overruns early
• Incorporate spend, affordability, and resource implications into project intake, prioritization, Fusion Team reviews, and leadership decision materials
• Track changes to project funding assumptions and approvals, escalating material variances and requests above applicable approval thresholds
• Lead implementation and ongoing operation of the Fusion Team governance model across IT platforms, including team kickoff, charters, rosters, operating cadence, and consistent PMO Lead practices
• Ensure Fusion Teams conduct recurring prioritization and delivery reviews, with visibility into outcomes, backlog, capacity, blockers, dependencies, and spend
• Coach and coordinate PMO Leads in validating strategic alignment and business cases, maintaining delivery plans and decision logs, coordinating UAT schedules, and tracking owners, commitments, and escalations to closure
• Publish consolidated weekly Fusion Team status for leadership and facilitate the monthly Cross-Team Review for shared dependencies, capacity conflicts, and unresolved escalations
• Reinforce decision rights: Business Owners determine what is built and in what order; IT determines how it is built, cost, and technical readiness; the PMO facilitates governance and execution accountability
• Oversee project planning and execution against agreed scope, milestones, resources, budgets, and measurable business outcomes
• Establish and maintain PMO standards, policies, templates, KPIs, dashboards, and practical Agile-compatible governance practices
• Proactively identify schedule, budget, scope, staffing, testing, adoption, and cross-team risks; maintain mitigation plans and escalate critical issues promptly
• Coordinate readiness, stakeholder communication, project reviews, post-implementation assessments, and lessons learned
• Own the project and portfolio status content for recurring ELT, SLT and Board presentations, working with the CTO and relevant executives to develop accurate, concise, decision-oriented materials
• Provide consolidated reporting on strategic initiatives, milestones, delivery health, approved versus forecast spend, material risks, dependencies, resource constraints, outcomes, and leadership decisions required
• Maintain a reliable source of truth for status, financials, commitments, and escalations; ensure reporting is timely, consistent, and supported by project owners
• Clearly distinguish approved commitments, emerging changes, forecast risks, and decisions requiring executive action

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Information Technology, Project Management, or equivalent experience
• 7+ years of project/program management or PMO experience, including experience leading complex cross-functional technology initiatives
• Demonstrated experience with IT project budgets, actuals, forecasting, variance analysis, and financial reporting in partnership with Finance
• Experience facilitating demand intake, portfolio prioritization, executive governance, and cross-functional delivery accountability
• Strong proficiency in Jira and project/portfolio reporting tools; advanced Excel and executive PowerPoint presentation skills
• Working knowledge of Agile delivery, software development lifecycles, resource planning, risk management, and business requirements/UAT coordination
• Strong leadership, facilitation, judgment, and ability to influence without direct authority
• Clear, concise written and verbal communication, including the ability to translate detailed project data into executive-level insights
• Financial discipline, attention to detail, strong organization, and ability to manage competing priorities
• Collaborative, proactive, and comfortable holding business and IT stakeholders accountable for decisions and commitments
• prior people or portfolio leadership preferred