Senior Acquisition Portfolio Lead

Pantheon Data • Washington, DC

1d • $135,000 - $150,000 • Remote

About The Position

A federal acquisition oversight office needs to build a portfolio management framework where none exists today. Recent DHS policy consolidated acquisition and requirements management into a single directive, established a five-pathway acquisition framework, and made Component Acquisition Executives responsible for validating which pathway each program follows. This role will design how this organization identifies the right acquisition pathway for a candidate investment, how it inventories and groups what it already owns, how it assesses and prioritizes, how governance decisions get made and by whom, how the framework gets implemented given what the organization can realistically absorb, and how portfolio performance gets measured afterward. You'll lead a two-person team, working with an information designer who turns your constructs into artifacts people will actually use. You own the substance, the client relationship, and the defensibility of what gets delivered. This is not a support role attached to a government program office. You'll be building something, presenting it to senior executives, and defending the reasoning.

Requirements

• 12+ years in federal acquisition program management, acquisition oversight, or acquisition governance
• Working fluency in DHS Directive 102-01 as recently reissued, including the pathway framework and the Component Acquisition Executive's role in pathway validation
• Demonstrated experience designing or substantially shaping acquisition governance processes, assessment criteria, portfolio constructs, or equivalent frameworks
• Direct experience supporting or operating within a Component Acquisition Executive office, a Chief Acquisition Officer organization, or equivalent oversight body
• Proven facilitation with senior executives, including sessions where stakeholders disagree
• Strong authoring ability: policy, process documentation, and executive-level analysis
• Ability to work onsite in Washington, DC
• Experience spanning both IT and non-IT investment governance

Nice To Haves

• Someone who has been on the governing side of acquisition oversight, not only inside a program office. You should have opinions about what makes a portfolio construct work, formed by watching some of them fail.
• The hardest part of this engagement isn't analytical. It's getting a set of program offices with different incentives to accept a common taxonomy, a common set of assessment criteria, and a governance process that constrains them. That requires credibility with senior executives, genuine facilitation skill, and a tolerance for being told no and coming back with a better answer.
• You'll also write. On a two-person team there's no one to hand a draft to - you author the constructs yourself and the information designer renders them.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical scope end to end: acquisition pathway identification criteria, the portfolio management construct, the implementation roadmap, and the portfolio performance management process
• Develop criteria for evaluating investments across strategic alignment, business value, technical health, program health, and acquisition readiness
• Design the governance process - participants, roles, responsibilities, and decision authority - and build consensus around it across program offices that don't currently share one
• Facilitate working sessions with senior government stakeholders, including executives, and translate what surfaces into structure
• Sequence an implementation roadmap against the organization's actual maturity rather than an ideal-state model
• Author the Project Management Plan and lead the post-award kickoff
• Serve as the primary point of contact for the government Program Manager and COR
• Direct the work of the information designer and integrate both workstreams into coherent deliverables

Benefits

• Competitive salaries and benefits
• SmartBenefits through the Washington Metro Area Transportation Authority
• Tuition assistance may be available for continuing education expenses and certifications related to their position

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: High school or GED