Portfolio Governance Lead - IT Project Management Office

Portfolio Governance Lead – IT PMO

Work Schedule

Standard (Mon-Fri)

Environmental Conditions

Office

Job Description

As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you’ll discover meaningful work that makes a positive impact on a global scale. Join our colleagues in bringing our Mission to life every single day to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We provide our global teams with the resources needed to achieve individual career goals while helping to take science a step beyond by developing solutions for some of the world’s toughest challenges, like protecting the environment, making sure our food is safe or helping find cures for cancer.

Role Overview

The Portfolio Governance Lead will play a key role in scaling a global IT portfolio governance capability supporting the Pharma Services Group.

The role will be responsible for establishing and operating the governance mechanisms that ensure investments across the IT portfolio are aligned to business priorities, deliver measurable value, and are executed with strong financial and delivery discipline.

This position will partner closely with global technology leaders, portfolio leads, and business stakeholders to bring transparency, prioritization discipline, and value realization to a portfolio of strategic digital initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

Portfolio Governance & Strategy

• Operate the governance framework for a global IT portfolio spanning multiple divisions and strategic initiatives.

• Partner with portfolio leaders and business stakeholders to ensure projects align with strategic priorities and deliver measurable outcomes.

• Facilitate quarterly portfolio reviews with leadership, ensuring investment decisions are supported by clear value and prioritization data.

Demand Intake & Prioritization

• Establish and enforce demand intake discipline across the IT portfolio.

• Lead prioritization of initiatives using structured evaluation criteria such as strategic alignment, financial return, and delivery feasibility.

• Work with business and IT stakeholders to ensure new initiatives are properly evaluated before entering execution.

This governance discipline ensures resources are allocated to initiatives with the highest strategic value.

Portfolio Health & Reporting

• Maintain portfolio-level visibility across project status, delivery health, financial performance, and risk exposure.

• Build executive dashboards that provide clear insight into portfolio performance and delivery trends.

• Identify systemic issues impacting delivery performance and work with portfolio leaders to resolve them.

Financial Governance

• Partner with Finance and PMO teams to ensure projects maintain financial discipline throughout their lifecycle.

• Monitor portfolio budget performance, ensuring visibility into CapEx / OpEx allocation and variance trends.

• Support leadership decision-making through financial scenario analysis and portfolio trade-off modeling.

Value Realization

• Ensure projects define measurable business outcomes and track progress against expected benefits.

• Establish mechanisms to track post-implementation value realization across major programs.

• Provide leadership with insights on portfolio-level ROI and value delivery.

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 12–15 years of experience in IT program management, portfolio management, or PMO leadership roles

• Experience operating governance frameworks for complex technology portfolios

• Experience supporting executive decision-making through portfolio insights and analytics

Core Skills

• Portfolio governance and prioritization

• Strategic planning and stakeholder engagement

• Financial and value realization analysis

• Executive reporting and dashboard development

• Risk and dependency management across large programs

Tools & Methods

Experience with one or more of the following:

• Enterprise portfolio management tools (Planview, Clarity, ServiceNow, etc.)

• Data visualization tools (Power BI, Tableau)

• Portfolio planning frameworks (AOP / strategic planning cycles)

• Governance frameworks such as stage gates or structured delivery methodologies

Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement

• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive alignment across multiple business units

• Strong analytical thinking combined with practical execution capability

• Comfortable operating in a global, matrixed environment

What Success Looks Like (First 12 Months)

• Demand intake discipline established across the portfolio

• Executive portfolio dashboards providing clear investment visibility

• Improved prioritization of initiatives aligned with business strategy

• Stronger linkage between project delivery and measurable business outcomes

Experience Level

Senior Level