Head of Portfolio Delivery & Chief of Staff

Perm Role

Travel Required:

Minimal to moderate – 10–20%

Our client is seeking a leader for a dual-mandate role in the Office of the CTO.

As Head of Portfolio & Delivery, this leader owns how technology work enters, is prioritized, is governed, is delivered and is proven across the client’s two businesses, and the corporate functions that support them: the single intake, the portfolio view, the Digital Delivery Program as a permanent function, delivery and change standards, the technology scorecard and capitalization evidence.

As Chief of Staff to the CTO, this leader runs the operating cadence of a technology organization of roughly 200 people and extends the CTO’s reach: preparing decisions, closing loops, carrying the CTO’s intent into forums the CTO cannot attend and bringing back what the CTO needs to hear.

The Chief of Staff mandate builds over the first six months as the leader earns a network inside our client, and gives the function executive access and the authority to hold the organization to its commitments.

The role is accountable for the delivery system and the leadership system, not for product priority: business technology leaders and their product managers own what is built and in what order; this leader owns how it gets in, how it gets done, how its value is proven and how the CTO’s leadership team runs. Portfolio & Delivery is a permanent function;

the Digital Delivery Program is the process that guides it.

• Design and run the CTO’s operating cadence: weekly leadership team meeting, monthly business reviews with each of the CTO’s direct reports, quarterly business reviews with the COO, CGO and CFO organizations, strategic technology planning sessions with business partners (twice per year) and the annual planning and budgeting cycle; own agendas, pre-reads, decision logs and follow-through.
• Prepare the CTO for Executive team, board and Technology Investment Committee sessions: frame the decision, assemble the evidence, pressure-test the recommendation and draft the materials to executive standard; own the technology sections of board and Leadership packs.
• Act as the CTO’s proxy where delegated: attend forums on the CTO’s behalf, represent the CTO’s position accurately, capture commitments and elevate only what requires the CTO; never trade on borrowed authority.
• Manage the flow of issues into and out of the CTO’s office: triage requests from the Executive Leadership, the business functions, and the technology organization, resolve what can be resolved at the right level and bring the CTO the decisions that are genuinely the CTO’s to make, with options and a recommendation. The standard is access made more productive, not access controlled: the CTO’s direct reports and Executive Leadership peers keep a direct line to the CTO, and this leader is measured on whether they experience the Office of the CTO as easier to work with.
• Own internal communication for the technology organization with the CTO: all-hands narratives, leadership team communications, change messaging for the operating model and the workforce plan, and the CTO’s written voice to the organization.
• Lead confidential and special projects for the CTO, including workforce and organization design, leadership hiring support, vendor and MSP rationalization and IPO-readiness preparation, with the discretion these require.
• Serve as an honest counsel to the CTO: tell the CTO what the organization is saying, where a plan is not landing and where the CTO’s own decisions or behavior are working or, alternatively, are creating friction, privately and early. Portfolio and Intake
• Stand up and run the single technology intake for every request from the businesses and…