Senior IT Program Officer (ITSDA)

World Bank Group•Washington, DC

19h•Onsite

About The Position

The World Bank Group is seeking a Senior IT Program Officer (ITSDA) to drive program-level execution discipline within the ITS Data Office (ITSDO). This role is responsible for standardizing how projects and products are planned, tracked, and reported, ensuring alignment between strategic objectives, delivery plans, and execution cadence. The officer will track priorities, dependencies, risks, and actions across the portfolio, ensuring stakeholders receive timely and coherent information. This position works closely with unit leadership to ensure consistency, visibility, and accountability across teams, connecting strategy to execution through practical frameworks for planning, prioritization, and delivery oversight. The goal is to reduce chaos, improve predictability, and provide management with a clear view of progress, risks, and trade-offs. This is a unit-level role with a cross-cutting mandate, operating across multiple teams, products, and projects, focusing on work management rather than direct delivery of a single initiative. The role covers all programs and projects within the unit, influencing planning, prioritization, execution tracking, and reporting practices. It involves working directly with unit leadership and engaging with product owners, technical leads, and delivery teams, with visibility into the full portfolio, including dependencies, risks, and resource constraints. The Senior IT Program Officer is recognized as a subject matter expert, routinely leading complex projects, integrating the work of other staff, and contributing to strategy and policy formulation. They identify and evaluate systemic issues, analyze complex problems, and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders on strategic matters. The role also involves providing guidance, coaching, and training to more junior staff.

Requirements

Proven expertise designing and implementing project and program management frameworks, governance practices, and delivery standards across multi-team environments.
Demonstrated ability to manage portfolio-wide execution: tracking risks, dependencies, KPIs, and driving accountability across complex, cross-functional programs.
Expert-level skills in planning, prioritization, and stakeholder engagement, with a track record of translating strategy into structured, measurable delivery plans.
Strong communication and advisory skills; able to prepare executive-level reporting, influence without direct authority, and support senior leadership decision-making.
Solid understanding of data, information and AI field.
Typically requires a Master’s degree with 8 years of experience or a Bachelors degree with a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
Program and portfolio management framework design (Expert)
Cross-team planning and roadmap alignment (Expert)
Prioritization frameworks (value vs effort, risk-based, etc.) (Expert)
Execution tracking and delivery oversight (Expert)
Risk and dependency management across teams (Expert)
Executive-level reporting and communication (Expert)
Change management and adoption of new practices (Expert)
Stakeholder Engagement (Expert)
Building Relationships (Expert)
Communicating Effectively (Expert)
Data-driven performance tracking and KPI definition (Advanced)
Use of program/project delivery tools (e.g., Azure DevOps, Jira) (Advanced)
Product Development Life Cycle (Advanced)
Influencing Others (Expert)
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) (Advanced)
Strategic Communication (Advanced)
Business Acumen (Expert)
Digital Literacy (Advanced)
Operational Excellence (Expert)
Advising (Expert)
Design Thinking (Advanced)
Influencing Skills (Expert)
Strategic and Tactical Planning (Expert)
Leading Others (Advanced)
Thought Leadership (Advanced)

Nice To Haves

SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager certification
Project Management (PMP) certification
Digital Transformation Certifications
Organizational Change Management Certifications
Design Thinking Certifications

Responsibilities

Define and implement a standardized approach to program and project management across teams.
Develop and enforce common templates for planning, roadmaps, status tracking, reporting, and value streaming.
Establish clear governance practices that teams can follow without friction.
Introduce structured methods for prioritization aligned with unit and organizational goals.
Work with product owners and solution architects to rationalize competing demands.
Ensure roadmaps are realistic, transparent, and regularly updated.
Define a consistent approach to managing scope changes and preventing uncontrolled scope creep.
Support teams in evaluating trade-offs between scope, timeline, and resources.
Escalate and resolve conflicts when priorities shift.
Track progress, including key performance indicators (KPI) across multiple projects and products, and identifying risks early.
Ensure dependencies across teams are visible and actively managed.
Drive corrective actions when delivery deviates from plan.
Work closely with unit leadership, product teams, and solution architects.
Act as a coordination layer across teams to reduce silos and misalignment.
Support leadership in preparing reviews, planning cycles, and strategic discussions.
Identify gaps in current practices and implement pragmatic improvements.
Promote a culture of accountability, ownership, and delivery focus.
Ensure frameworks evolve based on feedback and actual usage, not theory.
Act as the air traffic controller, lead the management the flow of work, including the collection, coordination, and reporting of initiatives and updates.
Oversee following through on actions, decisions, and commitments with leaders and teams.
Accompany leaders, when appropriate, to surface and distill action items and maintain strategic awareness on organizational and cross-organizational matters.
Advise and shape leadership decision-making by managing content preparation, enabling rapid review and informed strategic choices.
Steer leadership communications, oversee deadlines, and serve as an information source for stakeholders.
When appropriate, serve as the final point of clearance for respective organizational materials ensuring accuracy, consistency, and effectiveness—and advise or mobilize teams if further consideration or adjustments are required.