Senior PMO Manager

Job Overview:

The Senior PMO Manager will establish and lead a fit-for-purpose Enterprise PMO that converts business demand into a transparent, prioritized and executable project portfolio. The role owns the operating model, governance, controls, tools and management information for Demand Management, Portfolio and Prioritization Management, Cost Management, Resource Management and project delivery assurance. Working across Albatha Group businesses, IT leadership, Finance, HR, Procurement and delivery partners, the role will provide decision-quality insight, strengthen accountability and optimize investment, capacity and benefits realization.

This is a hands-on leadership position for an experienced PMO practitioner who can design new processes from the ground up, embed adoption across diverse stakeholders, and progressively mature the PMO from project reporting to enterprise portfolio management.

Key Accountabilities:

PMO Setup, Operating Model and Governance

• Design and implement the Enterprise PMO charter, service catalogue, governance model, decision rights, RACI, policies, standards, stage gates and delivery lifecycle.
• Establish integrated PMO processes, templates, controls, calendars and forums covering idea intake through prioritization, approval, delivery, benefits tracking and closure.
• Create a pragmatic PMO maturity roadmap, baseline current capabilities and deliver prioritized improvements in 30, 60, 90 days and annual horizons.

Demand Management

• Create a single demand intake process and demand register for strategic initiatives, regulatory work, business requests, technology lifecycle needs and operational improvements.
• Define minimum data requirements including business problem, strategic alignment, sponsor, expected benefits, urgency, dependencies, high-level cost, capacity needs and risk.
• Introduce demand triage, qualification and routing with benefit targets, ensuring incomplete or low-value requests are challenged before entering the portfolio pipeline.
• Facilitate demand discovery with business and technology teams
• Monitor demand ageing, conversion, rejection and backlog health; provide transparent feedback to requestors

Portfolio and Prioritization Management

• Build and maintain a single source of truth for the project portfolio, including approved, proposed, paused, at risk and completed initiatives.
• evelop and administer a transparent scoring model using strategic alignment, value, risk/compliance, customer impact, urgency, feasibility, dependency and capacity criteria.
• Facilitate prioritization sessions; model scenarios and trade-offs within budget and resource constraints.
• Provide independent challenge and assurance at stage gates, ensuring continued investment is supported by evidence and agreed tolerances.

Cost and Investment Management

• Establish portfolio financial controls for business cases, annual planning, budget baselines, forecasts, actuals, commitments, accruals and estimate-at-completion.
• Partner with Finance, Procurement, project managers and vendors to reconcile project costs and improve the timeliness and accuracy of financial reporting.
• Monitor budget variance, burn rate, and financial risk; escalate exceptions and support corrective actions.
• Create investment views by strategic theme, business unit, platform and delivery status.
• Coordinate benefits baselining, ownership, measurement and post-implementation realization reporting.

Resource and Capacity Management

• Create a consolidated resource and skills inventory covering internal teams, contractors and strategic partners.
• Implement role-based capacity planning, allocation, demand forecasting and resource heatmaps across projects and operational priorities.
• Facilitate periodic resource reviews with functional leaders and delivery managers; maintain agreed allocations and forward-looking capacity forecasts.
• Define resource planning standards, utilization measures and data ownership while avoiding counterproductive activity-level timesheet administration.

Stakeholder and Team Management

• Lead, coach and develop PMO analysts, project coordinators and portfolio specialists; set objectives, quality standards and development plans.
• Build trusted relationships with Group and business-unit executives, sponsors, Finance, HR, Procurement, Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity and delivery teams.
• Facilitate evidence-based decisions, constructively challenge optimistic assumptions and communicate difficult trade-offs with clarity.
• Manage PMO service quality and stakeholder satisfaction; drive adoption through communications, training and change management.

AI-Enabled PMO and Intelligent Automation

• Define and implement an AI-enabled PMO roadmap that applies generative AI, predictive analytics and workflow automation to demand intake, portfolio planning, reporting and governance.
• Use AI-assisted analysis to identify delivery risks, schedule slippage, cost anomalies, resource constraints, dependency conflicts and emerging portfolio trends, while retaining accountable human review.
• Introduce intelligent automation for project status consolidation, data-quality checks, meeting summaries, action tracking, RAID updates, executive reporting and portfolio insights.
• Build AI literacy within the PMO, coach project teams on effective use of approved AI tools, and measure adoption, efficiency gains, decision quality and realized value.

Key Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Finance, Information Technology, Engineering or a related discipline; a postgraduate qualification is advantageous.
• Strong knowledge of project, program and portfolio methods. PMP, PgMP, PfMP, PRINCE2, MSP, PMI OCP, MoP or equivalent certification is strongly preferred.
• Experience with IT financial management, business cases, CAPEX/OPEX, forecasting, benefits realization and vendor-commercial governance.
• Advanced proficiency in portfolio reporting and analytics using Power BI and Excel; practical experience with PPM and delivery tools such as Planview, ServiceNow SPM, Jira, Azure DevOps or Microsoft Project Online is advantageous.
• Exposure to SAP S/4HANA and large-scale ERP or digital transformation portfolios is advantageous.
• Excellent written and spoken English, presentation, facilitation, negotiation and conflict-resolution skills.