Vice President, Program Management Office

Key responsibilities PMO strategy and operating model • Define and deploy PMO governance, planning standards, decision rights, escalation paths, and review cadences for strategic-customer programs. • Translate Strategic Customer Office priorities into a PMO roadmap for adoption, capability building, and continuous improvement across Product Business Groups. • Establish explicit interfaces among the PMO, Customer Program Managers, Customer Business Units, Sales, Product Business Groups, and enabling functions. Portfolio integration and dependency management • Maintain one integrated view of the strategic-customer portfolio across Product Business Groups, functions, sites, and lifecycle stages. • Set decision-ready baselines that connect design, qualification, supply readiness, manufacturing ramp, product transfer, and production milestones to customer commitments. • Surface cross-business dependencies, capacity constraints, resource conflicts, and partner or supplier risks; facilitate prioritization and tradeoff decisions. Program governance and executive decision support • Establish and lead weekly Program Operations Reviews and monthly Executive Program Operations Reviews and Steering forums, with defined inputs, decision rights, and outputs. • Give executives and Customer Program Managers a consolidated, fact-based view of portfolio health, critical paths, decisions, and exposure without masking material risks. • Frame material issues around evidence, impact, options, recommendations, owners, and decision dates; maintain the decision log and drive closure. • Connect PMO governance to Customer Operations Reviews, quarterly roadmap reviews, and business reviews without duplicating customer-facing forums. Risk management, recovery and escalation • Set risk categories, severity triggers, and no-surprise escalation standards for strategic-customer programs. • Challenge cross-business risks and recovery plans; require accountable owners, milestones, and verification. • Resolve cross-organizational issues and escalate tradeoffs to leaders with decision authority. • Quantify revenue, margin, cash, capital, and customer exposure with Finance and business leaders. • Verify corrective-action closure, address systemic causes, and strengthen execution through retrospectives. Standards, systems and continuous improvement • Standardize integrated plans, scorecards, dependency maps, risk and decision logs, RACI, and executive dashboards. • Govern one reliable fact base for schedule, capacity, qualification, quality, delivery, economics, and recovery. • Deploy streamlined, AI-enabled digital workflows that improve productivity, traceability, and decision speed. • Institutionalize controlled records and lessons learned for reuse across customers, Product Business Groups, and programs. Organization leadership and partnership • Build and develop the PMO team and federated community; set standards for methods, coaching, succession, and growth. • Partner across leadership and Customer Program Managers to foster fact-based accountability across organizational boundaries. • Timely, decision-ready portfolio visibility and leadership confidence in impartial program reporting. • Greater fidelity to customer commitments across schedule, capacity, qualification, quality, cost, and margin. • Earlier mitigation of cross-business risks, with fewer late surprises and avoidable escalations. • Faster closure of dependencies, resource conflicts, and recovery actions, with verified owners. • Consistent PMO governance, standards, review cadences, and decision rights across Product Business Groups. • Improved data quality, action aging, decision cycle time, and milestone performance. • A strong PMO talent pipeline and a culture of transparent, cross-functional execution. Success measures Qualifications • At least 15 years in enterprise program or portfolio management, operations, or product development in complex B2B technology, with substantial senior leadership responsibility. • Demonstrated success building or scaling an enterprise PMO across businesses, functions, sites, or geographies. • Experience governing hardware development, NPI, qualification, ramp, transfer, and production in photonics, optical communications, semiconductors, lasers, or related industries. • Deep capability in portfolio integration, critical-path planning, dependency management, resource prioritization, risk and recovery, and change leadership. • Proven ability to lead executive governance that converts complex technical and operational information into timely decisions and action. • Executive presence and judgment to influence without authority, resolve competing priorities, and hold senior stakeholders accountable. • Strong financial and commercial acumen, including the ability to assess revenue at risk, margin, cash, inventory, capital, and customer impact. • Experience leading and developing culturally and technically diverse PMO and program-management teams across regions. • Strong analytical, communication, and stakeholder-management skills, with proficiency in data, dashboards, portfolio systems, and digital tools. • Bachelor’s degree in engineering, business, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience. An advanced degree or program-management certification is advantageous. Working conditions • This is an on-site position. • Occasional off-site meetings or travel are required. • Flexibility to support global teams and decision forums across multiple time zones. • Regular interaction with executives, leaders, program teams, and selected external contacts. • Integrity – Create an Environment of Trust • Collaboration – Innovate Through the Sharing of Ideas • Accountability – Own the Process and the Outcome • Respect – Recognize the Value in Everyone • Enthusiasm – Find a Sense of Purpose in Work Culture commitment Demonstrate Coherent’s ICARE values in all aspects of the role. •…