Senior IT Program and Portfolio Manager

The EOE Information Technology Group strives to connect and empower communities of learners, from birth to college to the workforce, by building and supporting innovative systems that facilitate positive outcomes for all. We are a diverse team of professionals dedicated to ensuring that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts remains the national leader in education. Agencies in the Education Secretariat include The Children’s Trust, the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education (DHE).

As EOE strives to improve the delivery of IT services, we seek an experienced Senior IT Portfolio & Program Manager to manage the full catalog of projects in their assigned agency as the de facto agency CIO, including participating in strategic planning with senior agency leadership, acting as the business liaison between the agency and EOE, and representing the agency and EOE to other state agencies, including but not limited to the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS). This position reports directly to the EOE Secretariat Chief Information Officer (SCIO). This role will operate within a matrixed organizational structure. The incumbent of this role will collaborate with peers across the Secretariat and oversee project managers within their assigned agency to execute projects on time, on budget, and on target to meet agency and EOE priorities. This individual must have a strong grasp of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) principles and practices.

Role Overview
The Senior IT Program and Portfolio Manager is responsible for ensuring that agency technology work is well governed, strategically aligned, financially transparent, and effectively delivered. The role sits at the intersection of agency strategy, product management, service design, IT delivery, fiscal planning, procurement, vendor management, and operations.

The person in this role will help agencies move from a project-by-project approach toward a more mature product and service mindset. This includes helping agency leadership and business owners define outcomes, understand user and constituent needs, develop roadmaps, prioritize backlogs, measure value, and make informed trade-offs about scope, timing, cost, and risk.

The primary work location for this role will be at 135 Santilli Hwy, Everett, Massachusetts 02149. The work schedule for this position is Monday through Friday, 9AM to 5PM EST.  This position is expected to follow a hybrid model of reporting to work that combines in-office workdays and work from home days as needed. Occasional local travel may be required.

Responsibilities: 

The role also helps clarify responsibilities across agency stakeholders, product or business owners, and EOE IT:
•    Agency leadership and business owners define why the work matters, what outcomes are needed, what policy or operational goals must be achieved, and what funding or sponsorship is available. 
•    Product teams or business owners define what should be built or improved to meet business, user, and constituent needs. 
•    EOE IT determines how solutions are designed, built, secured, integrated, tested, deployed, operated, supported, and maintained. 
The Senior IT Program and Portfolio Manager helps these groups work together effectively, ensuring that business priorities are translated into actionable technology work and that technology decisions are communicated clearly to agency stakeholders.
 

Strategic Planning, Product Alignment, and Agency Partnership:
•    Partner with agency leadership, policy owners, program leaders, business owners, and product teams where applicable to define priorities and translate them into strategic technology roadmaps.
•    Help agency stakeholders apply product management principles, including outcome definition, roadmap development, backlog prioritization, user-centered requirements, success measures, and continuous improvement.
•    Support agencies in adopting a product mindset focused on long-term management of products and services that meet business, operational, and constituent needs.
•    Serve as a trusted advisor to agency leadership by communicating EOE IT strategy, priorities, constraints, risks, and opportunities in clear, accessible language.
•    Represent the assigned agency or agencies on the SCIO’s Senior Leadership Team and ensure agency needs are considered in Secretariat-wide planning.
•    Advocate for agency needs while reinforcing the value of shared services, common platforms, enterprise architecture, data architecture, cybersecurity standards, accessibility, and reusable technology capabilities.
•    Identify opportunities for cross-agency collaboration, shared solutions, service consolidation, and common technology approaches that reduce duplication and improve outcomes.
Service Design, Constituent Experience, and Business Translation
•    Promote service design principles to ensure technology solutions are shaped around the needs of constituents, educators, families, institutions, agency staff, and other users.
•    Help agencies define and improve end-to-end services, not just individual systems, with attention to user experience, accessibility, operational workflows, communications, support models, and measurable outcomes.
•    Work with agency stakeholders to identify pain points, service gaps, process inefficiencies, and opportunities to improve constituent-facing and staff-facing services.
•    Translate business, policy, and operational needs into clear technology requirements, delivery priorities, and decision points for IT teams, vendors, project managers, and business analysts. Recommend and co-lead business process reviews when requirements, scope, roles, or desired outcomes are unclear.
•    Translate technical risks, constraints, options, and recommendations into terms that agency leadership and non-technical stakeholders can understand and act on.
•    Ensure digital services are designed and delivered with attention to accessibility, equity, usability, security, reliability, scalability, and long-term maintainability.

Portfolio Governance, Intake, and Prioritization
•    Oversee the assigned agency technology portfolio, ensuring that projects, products, services, and operational needs are visible, prioritized, and aligned with agency and Secretariat goals.
•    Guide agencies through EOE IT governance processes, including the IT Governance Committee and Architecture Review Board, to evaluate, prioritize, and approve technology requests.
•    Ensure proposed initiatives are considered in the context of agency priorities, available funding, resource capacity, technical dependencies, cybersecurity requirements, accessibility obligations, and portfolio trade-offs.
•    Develop and maintain intake processes that support forward-looking IT planning and clear evaluation of new requests.
•    Establish mechanisms to assess portfolio health, including project status, risks, dependencies, budget performance, staffing capacity, vendor performance, aging technology, technical debt, operational issues, and strategic alignment.
•    Use tools such as Jira, Confluence, GitHub, dashboards, and portfolio reports to support transparency, prioritization, delivery tracking, and executive-level reporting.
Project, Program, and Team Management
•    Supervise project managers and business analysts assigned to the agency portfolio, ensuring clear priorities, expectations, workplans, and accountability for delivery.
•    Ensure project managers and business analysts effectively support product owners, business owners, agency stakeholders, vendors, and technical teams.
•    Manage contracted vendor teams supporting the agency portfolio, ensuring their work is clearly scoped, aligned with project priorities, integrated with EOE IT delivery processes, and accountable to agreed-upon timelines, deliverables, quality standards, and contract expectations.
•    Oversee assigned IT projects and communicate progress, risks, dependencies, technical issues, and decisions in clear, accessible language.
•    Coordinate project timelines, release planning, testing, implementation, and delivery activities with product owners, business owners, technical leads, the SCIO, the Chief Information Security Officer, shared services teams, and vendors.
•    Apply Agile and Scaled Agile Framework practices as appropriate, including backlog management, sprint planning, release planning, dependency management, and continuous improvement.
•    Ensure project managers deliver against scope, schedule, budget, milestone, and deliverable expectations.
•    Maintain communication plans that keep stakeholders informed about status updates, key risks, mitigation plans, timeline changes, and decision points.

IT Investment, Budget, and Funding Management
•    Coordinate with project managers, business analysts, agency leadership, EOE IT, EOTSS, and fiscal staff to develop accurate budget projections for projects, products, services, staffing, staffing, procurements, licenses, hosting, maintenance, and other technology needs.
•    Maintain a sources-and-uses view of all IT investments in the assigned portfolio, including people, products, services, applications, platforms, vendors, and funding sources.
•    Track funding sources across agency operating budgets, EOE IT operating funds, capital funding, federal funds, grants, retained revenue, interagency service agreements, and other applicable sources.
•    Ensure agency leadership and EOE IT have clear visibility into the full cost of technology investments, including one-time costs, recurring costs, staffing, licensing, vendor support, maintenance, modernization, and decommissioning.
•    Collaborate with fiscal and procurement staff to develop and manage annual budgets, spending plans, procurement plans, contract renewals, and funding strategies.
•    Promote cost-effective use of IT resources by identifying opportunities to consolidate systems, retire legacy applications, reduce duplication, leverage shared services, and align investments with strategic priorities.

Vendor Management, Procurement, and Contract Accountability
•    Manage IT procurements through successful completion in partnership with EOE IT, agency fiscal staff, procurement teams, legal teams, and agency stakeholders.
•    Lead or support the development of scopes of work, business requirements, evaluation criteria, procurement documents, vendor questions and responses, and contract materials.
•    Ensure vendor work is aligned with agency priorities, EOE IT standards, contractual commitments, security requirements, accessibility obligations, technical architecture, delivery timelines, and budget expectations.
•    Hold vendors accountable by reviewing invoices, deliverables, Jira tickets, project plans, status reports, testing results, sprint outputs, documentation, and other artifacts to verify that work has been completed and meets expectations.
•    Partner with project managers, business analysts, product owners, and technical leads to monitor vendor performance, identify risks, resolve issues, and escalate concerns.
•    Ensure vendor deliverables are documented, reviewed, accepted, and connected to contract terms, payment milestones, and project outcomes.

Operations, Security, Accessibility, and Shared Services
•    Coordinate with EOTSS to ensure the agency’s operational technology needs are met.
•    Work with the CISO to ensure EOE’s and the agency’s authentication, authorization, and accounting framework meets EOTSS standards and that application access is managed using the principle of least privilege.
•    Ensure technology work is aligned with applicable security, privacy, accessibility, records retention, data governance, and compliance requirements.
Support the use of shared IT services, common platforms, and reusable capabilities to improve consistency, reduce cost, and strengthen long-term supportability.
•    Coordinate with EOE IT shared services leads, architects, developers, quality assurance analysts, business analysts, technical trainers, and operations teams to ensure systems are built, tested, deployed, maintained, and supported effectively.
•    Help agencies understand operational impacts of technology decisions, including support models, staffing needs, training, documentation, service levels, maintenance, and long-term sustainability.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Six (6) to ten (10) or more years of progressive experience in senior IT product, portfolio, program, or technology management roles, with a demonstrated ability to lead complex, deadline-driven initiatives, preferably in the public sector.
• Five (5) or more years of leadership experience managing or mentoring project managers, business analysts, product teams, vendors, and cross-functional teams within a large, matrixed organization.
• Strong knowledge of product management principles, including product vision, roadmaps, backlogs, user-centered prioritization, outcome measurement, and continuous improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to foster a product mindset among business leaders and agency stakeholders, aligning technology investments with organizational priorities, constituent outcomes, and measurable business value.
• Knowledge of service design principles, including user research, journey mapping, usability, accessibility, process improvement, and end-to-end service delivery for constituent-facing services.
• Strong understanding of IT strategy, portfolio management, Agile and project delivery methodologies, budgeting, procurement, vendor management, and operational service delivery.
• Experience managing technology portfolios and investments across multiple funding sources, including operating, capital, federal, and grant funding, while maintaining portfolio-level visibility into products, services, projects, systems, vendors, funding, risks, and dependencies.
• Experience managing vendors and contracts, including developing scopes of work, evaluating deliverables, reviewing invoices, monitoring performance, and ensuring contractual compliance.
• Experience leading project managers and business analysts by establishing delivery standards, coaching teams, reviewing work products, and aligning execution with portfolio priorities.
• Experience leading organizational change initiatives, including stakeholder engagement, communications, training, adoption planning, risk management, and change management.
• Working knowledge of enterprise architecture, data architecture, cybersecurity, identity and access management, cloud services, application modernization, accessibility, shared services, data warehousing, analytics, and data visualization technologies.
• Familiarity with modern collaboration and delivery platforms such as Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Microsoft 365, Power BI, Snowflake, content management systems, and software testing tools.
• Excellent interpersonal, facilitation, written and verbal communication, and presentation skills, with the ability to build consensus, navigate ambiguity, manage competing priorities, and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business needs into actionable technology solutions and communicate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.
• Commitment to accessibility, equity, security, transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement in the delivery of government technology services.

To Apply:

Interested candidates should submit the following with their application:  

• Resume
• Cover letter outlining your relevant experience and interest in the position

Questions regarding this position should be directed to Taina.Noelsaint@mass.gov  

MINIMUM ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS:

Applicants must have at least (A) seven (7) years of full-time or, equivalent part-time, professional, administrative, supervisory, or managerial experience in IT administration or IT management, of which (B) at least three (3) years must have been in a managerial capacity.

Comprehensive Benefits

When you embark on a career with the Commonwealth, you are offered an outstanding suite of employee benefits that add to the overall value of your compensation package. We take pride in providing a work experience that supports you, your loved ones, and your future.

Want the specifics? Explore our Employee Benefits and Rewards!

An Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer.  Females, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

The Commonwealth is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law.  Research suggests that qualified women, Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) may self-select out of opportunities if they don't meet 100% of the job requirements.  We encourage individuals who believe they have the skills necessary to thrive to apply for this role.