Software Portfolio Strategist

Sunnyvale, California, United States Corporate Functions

Business Operations, Employee Engagement, and Strategy is part of IS&T and shapes the strategy, operations, and culture of IS&T. The team oversees business planning, IS&T's partnership strategy across Apple, and the technology tools that support the organization’s day-to-day operations. This team also leads IS&T's enterprise generative AI strategy and manages compliance across systems. Through its communications and employee programs, it champions the growth, inclusion, and development of everyone in IS&T and drives the standard for IS&T brand and product communications across Apple.

Apple's IS&T Software Asset Management team, within the Office of the CIO, governs a $450M+ software portfolio spanning 1300+ products and 250+ vendors. Our mandate is to enable and create value for Apple’s business - ensuring every software investment delivers measurable impact through total cost of ownership (TCO) optimization, strategic lifecycle management, and cross-functional partnership. We are hiring a Software Portfolio Strategist who thinks like a strategist, moves like an operator, and influences like a consultant - someone who sees a renewal as an inflection point, not a transaction, and who treats data as a language for driving enterprise decisions.

This role is for someone who is restlessly curious about where software spend is headed, why it is growing, and what levers actually exist to shape it.

You will not inherit a playbook - you will write one. This role sits at the intersection of technology strategy, financial planning, and cross-functional influence within the Office of the CIO. You will own a portfolio of enterprise software investments end-to-end: setting lifecycle direction, building the analytical case for action, and driving decisions through rooms where you do not have positional authority but earn credibility through rigor and clarity.

The OCIO exists to enable Apple’s business and create value - and this role is a direct expression of that mission. You will quantify and optimize total cost of ownership across your portfolio, ensuring Apple gets maximum strategic and operational value from every software dollar spent. That means going beyond sticker price to evaluate implementation costs, operational overhead, integration complexity, and long-term vendor trajectory.

Our operating model is shifting from manual processing to automation-enabled strategic work. That means less time chasing renewals and more time answering harder questions:
Should we build or buy? Where is AI-driven cost growth outpacing value? Which vendors are strategic partners vs. commodity suppliers? What does a 5-year TCO view of this portfolio actually look like? You will work directly with IS&T leadership, product teams, Finance, and Procurement - not as a support function, but as a decision-shaping partner who connects software investment strategy to business value.

• Own full lifecycle for assigned software portfolios - renewals, true-ups, terminations, migrations - with a strategic lens on every decision
• Develop and maintain directional lifecycle strategies grounded in spend, criticality, utilization, and market trajectory
• Lead software rationalization efforts: classify, prioritize, and drive action on portfolio optimization to reduce TCO and increase value delivery
• Establish and run portfolio steering reviews with cross-functional stakeholders
• Own multi-million-dollar budget forecasts and 5-year directional plans for your portfolios
• Build and present build-vs-buy evaluations, TCO models, cost optimization analyses, and scenario planning
• Identify spend trends proactively - particularly AI-driven consumption growth - and frame…