Portfolio Strategy Lead VMO VP

hackajob is collaborating with Barclays to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.

About the role

Join Barclays as a Portfolio Strategy Lead VMO VP, where you will drive enterprise portfolio strategy by aligning OKRs, roadmaps, and strategic priorities with overall business goals. Your role supports portfolio governance across multiple Agile teams, ensuring tasks are prioritized, aligned, and executed consistently while eliminating competing priorities. You will advocate large-scale Agile transformation by introducing new ways of working, influencing cross-functional teams, and driving organizational change without direct authority. Additionally, you will serve as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, building relationships, influencing strategic agreements, and fostering alignment across the organization. The role leverages governance practices, data-driven insights, and AI-enabled solutions to optimize portfolio performance and deliver measurable business outcomes.

The purpose of the role is to drive innovation, meet customer needs, and ensure the bank's long-term success and competitive edge.

Responsibilities

• Execute market research to understand customer needs, pain points, and emerging trends to support the analysis of profitability, market size, and positioning for new products compared to existing offerings, and to identify opportunities for diversification to gain a competitive advantage.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across departments and teams including marketing, sales, technology, engineers, and designers to generate innovative and feasible product ideas and prototypes for testing aligned with customer needs and strategic goals.
• Develop concepts and specifications defining features, functionalities, target market, user interface, technical specifications, and potential revenue models of new products.
• Evaluate the technical feasibility, legal compliance, and potential risks associated with the development and launch of new products.
• Monitor market trends and analyze feedback from internal employees and target customers through prototypes, user testing sessions, and beta programs to identify areas for improvement and refine the product before launch.
• Manage comprehensive launch plans and technical deployments for products, establishing rollout timelines, marketing strategies, training initiatives, and communication channels to promote new products effectively.
• Monitor key metrics such as adoption rates, usage patterns, customer satisfaction, and revenue generation to assess the product's performance against set goals.
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management, on functional and cross-functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Collaborate with other areas of the business to keep up to speed with business activity and strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought, comparing and selecting complex alternatives.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem-solving processes.
• Seek out, build, and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders to accomplish key business objectives using influencing and negotiating skills.

Requirements

• Experience covering a Value Management Office (VMO), SAFe, LACE, or another enterprise Agile environment.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders, support organizational change, and drive outcomes without direct authority.
• Experience aligning portfolio strategy, OKRs, and roadmaps with enterprise business targets while guiding portfolio prioritization.
• Support for large-scale Agile transformations within multi-layered, cross-functional organizations.
• Application of AI governance and adoption values, with experience using Agile tools such as JIRA.
• Experience establishing governance frameworks and oversight processes during enterprise transformation.
• Strong interpretative skills with the ability to leverage data and insights to support strategic decisions.
• Previous experience in banking or financial services environments.
• Experience operating at the VP level or demonstrating VP-level capacity.
• Ability to support and deliver results in a matrixed organization through influence and cross-functional collaboration.

Vice President Expectations

• Contribute to or set strategy, drive requirements, and make recommendations for change.
• Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures.
• If managing a team, define jobs and responsibilities, plan for the department’s future needs and operations, counsel employees on performance, and contribute to employee pay decisions/changes.
• Lead specialists to influence the operations of a department in alignment with strategic and tactical priorities, balancing short and long-term goals, and ensuring budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements.
• For individual contributors, act as a subject matter expert within your discipline, guide technical direction, lead collaborative multi-year assignments, and train, guide, and coach less experienced specialists.
• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of organizational functions to contribute to achieving business goals.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought, comparing and selecting complex alternatives, and using in-depth analysis with interpretative thinking to define problems and develop innovative solutions.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence, and Stewardship, as well as the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge, and Drive.

Skills

You may be assessed on key critical skills relevant for success in the role, such as:

• Risk and controls
• Change and transformation
• Business acumen
• Strategic thinking
• Digital and technology
• Job-specific technical skills

This role is located in Wilmington, DE.