Sr. Manager, IT Governance & Strategic Planning

About the Role

The Sr. Manager, IT Governance & Strategic Planning operationalizes the IT strategy by translating IT objectives into actionable roadmaps, standardized processes, and measurable outcomes across IT portfolios. This role leads programs for standardization, continuous improvement, change management, and KPI management across IT functions and portfolios. It also directs the system administration of supporting design, development, and PMO systems, internal operational data analytics, and functional and portfolio-based KPI reporting capabilities.

Partnering with IT Governance, Portfolio/Systems Owners, Security, PMO, and other IT functional leaders, this leader drives adoption of common ways of working, enables data-driven decision-making, and scales automation to improve delivery speed, quality, and efficiency while ensuring alignment with the IT strategy and corporate strategic objectives.

Responsibilities

• Convert IT strategic objectives into plans and functional roadmaps for standardization, analytics, automation, and organizational effectiveness. Ensure outcomes, dependencies, and observed risks are identified and tracked.
• Lead change management initiatives for new or modified processes, controls, and tools across IT functions and portfolios. Cover stakeholder analysis, communication, training, adoption measurement, and reinforcement to ensure sustained behavior change across technical and non-technical teams.
• Build and maintain IT process standards, playbooks, templates, and RACIs for planning, development, testing, release, and operations. Ensure consistent adoption and periodic refresh based on lessons learned.
• Establish and run a Continuous Improvement program (Kaizen events, value-stream mapping, retrospectives), prioritize a visible improvement backlog, and deliver quantifiable gains in cycle time, quality, and cost.
• Own the KPI taxonomy for IT; ensure metric definitions, targets, and data quality support audit readiness and executive decision-making.
• Lead the development of executive scorecards and functional and portfolio-based dashboards. Partner with data analysts to ensure data pipelines, governance, and visualization (e.g., Power BI) deliver reliable, near-real-time insights for operational excellence within IT.
• Support governance/engineering toolsets (e.g., Jira, Confluence, test/ALM tools, workflow automation platforms) by defining standards, usage patterns, integrations, and upgrade roadmaps that enable scale and align to KPI and reporting objectives.
• Identify process automation opportunities (workflow, approvals, controls evidence, reporting). Oversee design, implementation, and adoption to reduce manual effort, improve traceability, and accelerate release cadence across IT functions and portfolios.
• Coordinate IT vendor management practices across IT, partnering with Procurement, Security, Finance, and functional IT leaders to establish standardized vendor review cadences, performance criteria, risk considerations, and effectiveness assessments.
• Recruit, develop, and coach a diverse team (admins, automation engineers, data analysts, change practitioners) while fostering a culture of accountability, transparency, and measurable outcomes.
• Other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree and 5+ years of experience in IT strategy/PMO, process excellence, analytics, or platform ownership, including leadership of cross-functional initiatives.
• Demonstrated success driving organizational change and standardization at scale; strong command of KPIs and outcome-based planning.
• Hands-on experience with Agile/Lean practices and continuous improvement methods applied to software and IT service workflows.
• Proficiency with ALM and collaboration platforms (e.g., Jira, Confluence), workflow automation (e.g., ServiceNow/Power Platform/Atlassian automation), and analytics/visualization (e.g., Power BI).
• Working knowledge of SDLC, DevOps/CI-CD concepts, and ITIL-aligned service practices; ability to partner effectively with Security, QA/RA, and PMO.
• Executive-ready communication skills; able to synthesize complex information into crisp updates, decision memos, and dashboards for senior leadership.
• Proven people leadership: coaching, performance management, and building a high-performing, multi-disciplinary team.
• Experience in regulated software/medical device environments and familiarity with ISO 13485/14971 and audit expectations.

Skills

• Certifications such as COBIT, Lean Six Sigma (Green/Black Belt), PMP/SAFe/CSM, ITIL, or CBIP (analytics).
• Familiarity with relevant toolsets and ecosystem elements (e.g., Atlassian suite, Smartsheet, Power BI, AWS, Ardoq).
• Background implementing KPI taxonomies, data governance for operational metrics, and automation at scale (e.g., platform workflows, evidence collection).
• Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook).
• Atlassian Suite (Jira, Confluence, Zephyr).
• Tricentis qTest Suite.
• Dashboard & Reporting Platforms (Power BI, Tableau, etc.).
• Workplace Management Tool (Smartsheet, Asana, Monday.com).