Senior Manager, Portfolio Management

UL Solutions•Northbrook, IL

3d•$140,000 - $175,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Portfolio Management is responsible for establishing, leading, and continuously improving the Global Technology (GT) portfolio management function. This role drives governance, prioritization, and portfolio execution processes to ensure technology investments align with business strategy, resource capacity, risk appetite, and value realization objectives. The position serves as a facilitator of portfolio governance forums and is the owner of the Global Technology Intake/Prioritization processes. The Senior Manager partners with executive leadership, business stakeholders, technology leaders, architecture teams, and delivery teams to evaluate incoming demand, guide investment decisions, manage portfolio health, and ensure successful execution of strategic initiatives.

Requirements

Advanced portfolio, program, and project management expertise.
Strong strategic thinking and business acumen.
Excellent executive-level communication, influencing, and presentation skills.
Proven ability to balance competing priorities and make data-driven investment decisions.
Deep understanding of financial management, forecasting, and benefits realization.
Ability to lead through ambiguity and organizational change.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
Ability to build trusted partnerships across executive, business, and technical teams.
10+ years of experience in project, program, and portfolio management.
Experience managing enterprise or large-scale portfolios with multiple programs and cross-functional dependencies.
Demonstrated experience in portfolio governance, investment prioritization, and capacity planning.
Experience developing and presenting executive-level business cases and portfolio reports.
Bachelor’s degree required

Nice To Haves

advanced degree preferred (e.g., MBA, MA in Project Management, or equivalent).
PMP, PgMP, PfMP, Prince2, and/or Agile certifications preferred but not required.

Responsibilities

Establish and operate the Global Technology portfolio governance framework, including processes, roles, decision rights, stage gates, and meeting cadences.
Develop and maintain a tiered governance structure that supports operational intake reviews, cross-functional portfolio prioritization, and executive investment decision-making.
Facilitate Portfolio Reviews meetings with senior executives, and technology leadership to drive prioritization, funding, sequencing, and trade-off decisions.
Ensure governance processes are scalable, transparent, and aligned with enterprise strategic objectives.
Lead continuous improvement efforts to mature portfolio management capabilities and governance effectiveness.
Manage the enterprise technology portfolio and maintain a single source of truth for all approved, proposed, and in-flight initiatives.
Lead the end-to-end process that supports evaluation and prioritization of incoming technology requests based on strategic alignment, business value, risk, capacity, dependencies, and benefit realization potential.
Facilitate prioritization discussions across business and technology stakeholders to resolve competing priorities and resource conflicts.
Drive capacity-aligned investment decisions using portfolio data, resource constraints, and strategic objectives.
Create and maintain scoring models, prioritization frameworks, and decision-support tools that improve investment transparency.
Act as a liaison between executive business leaders and Global Technology regarding portfolio investments and prioritization decisions.
Prepare and present executive-level portfolio reviews, dashboards, investment recommendations, risk assessments, and strategic options.
Facilitate cross-functional discussions with SVPs, Finance, business sponsors, and GT leadership to drive alignment and timely decision-making.
Build trusted partnerships across the enterprise to ensure stakeholder engagement and organizational buy-in.
Monitor overall portfolio health, delivery performance, risk exposure, dependencies, and benefit realization.
Ensure approved initiatives move efficiently from intake through planning, execution, and value realization.
Partner with delivery leaders and business sponsors to identify and resolve portfolio-level issues.
Escalate critical risks, resource constraints, and delivery challenges to executive leadership with recommended actions.
Support resolution of cross-functional dependencies impacting strategic initiatives.
Develop portfolio dashboards, executive reporting, KPIs, and governance metrics for the end to end process.
Measure portfolio performance, demand trends, resource utilization, throughput, benefits realization, and investment outcomes.
Manage the performance of direct reports by defining accountabilities, establishing performance objectives and goals, providing feedback and guidance, and ensuring adherence to organizational policies.
Read and follow the Underwriters Laboratories Code of Conduct, and follow all physical and digital security practices.
Performs other duties as directed