Portfolio Manager (Program/Project Management) – WAS, SAM, and Investment Products

Your Opportunity

Schwab remains committed to providing increased visibility to career growth opportunities and job requirements. This posting announcement is part of increased transparency and while all qualified applicants will be reviewed and considered, this organization has a preferred candidate identified for this role.

At Schwab, you’re empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us “challenge the status quo” and transform the finance industry together.

We believe in the importance of in-office collaboration and fully intend for the selected candidate for this role to work on site in the specified location.

Reporting into a Head of Portfolio and Project Management in the Portfolio & Project Management (PPM) organization, this individual will provide leadership for technology projects within WAS, SAM, and Investment Products.  In addition to management of the overall health and monitoring of the portfolios, our team collaborates across the organization to deliver value through efficient, focused, and predictable project execution of solutions to business problems and opportunities. 

The Director will provide Portfolio and Project Leadership for WAS, SAM, and Investment Products.  Priorities are driven by the firm's strategic focus areas and the portfolio’s business objectives.  The Director and their team will help advance the portfolio’s strategy by managing risks across people, process, technology and controls, monitoring, reporting, and agile, program and project management practices to ensure effective execution and delivery.

Key responsibilities:

• Exercise program/project management leadership and execution over WAS, SAM, and Investment Products
• Acts as a thought partner to project sponsors and partners; collaborates to identify unarticulated needs and improve business benefits; represents stakeholder and executive viewpoints.
• Partners with Portfolio Stakeholders to develop a common understanding of business strategy, product roadmaps, technology teams’ capacity, and Agile practices.
• Effectively interprets project resource needs and adjusts as required to ensure business outcomes.
• Develops effective risk mitigation plans and seamlessly executes; adjusts risk management approach as new risks arise; ensures teams are managing/mitigating risk at a project level.
• Drives to complete portfolio planning and manages the portfolio intake process for new work to be executed/delivered. Provides supervision and direction to project teams to ensure successful execution. Ensures quality and evidence of project documentation.
• Oversee the management of projects and initiatives to ensure delivery of lean business case outcomes, and the adherence to established PPM standards and best practices.
• Manages 3rd party portfolio spend and to ensure maximum value for portfolio. Create complete cost transparency across all labor and non-labor costs, to ensure most effective utilization of spend within the portfolio.
• Facilitate discussion on appropriate levels of run vs grow, product lifecycle, as well as software spend in the portfolio.
• Provide transparency on forecast demand and actuals for all grow work in the portfolio, understanding Agile Team throughput to effectively manage portfolio demand and ensure teams are fully utilized.
• Manages and communicates portfolio changes; facilitates trade-off decisions in the portfolio. Ensures project teams are managing change to best deliver business value.
• Manages staff performance by setting clear expectations, providing regular feedback, learning opportunities, and developing improvement plans as needed. Writes reviews.
• Partners to organize teams in value streams/agile release trains (ARTs); manage strategic demand in the portfolio Kanban to ensure teams delivery of continuous value; facilitate intake of new work leveraging minimum viable products, business outcomes hypothesis, Agile forecasting/estimating, and define objective measures and milestones.

What you have

To ensure that we have fulfilled our promise of "challenging the status quo," this role has specific qualifications that successful candidates should have.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree. 
• 12+ years as a program/project leader - managing multiple large, sophisticated, and cross functional projects.
• Extensive program/project management experience.  Managed over $15+ million per year in program/project work.
• Recent experience (within past 5 years) as a direct people manager of 4 or more resources - including responsibility for objectives and reviews.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with senior business and technology leaders for success.
• Exceptional relationship management skills, as well as very strong business and technology acumen.
• Strong business and technology acumen. Able to manage multiple large, complex, and cross functional technology projects and navigate in complex matrixed environments.
• Team player who can work across organizations to deliver to success and assume ownership and accountability for delivery excellence.
• Builds trust through the ability to communicate tough messages and statuses effectively for various stakeholders while always tying those messages to business objectives.
• Strong problem solving and critical thinking skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years in financial services with extensive business and technology experience.
• Experience in scaled agile practices (SAFe). Experience in AI delivery models a plus.
• Experience in use of MS project, Jira, Confluence, Rally, and SharePoint.

In addition to the salary range, this role is also eligible for bonus or incentive opportunities