Senior Program Manager – IT Portfolio Delivery & AI-First Engineering

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Senior Program Manager - IT Portfolio Delivery

Lead Technology Delivery Across a Strategic Business Portfolio

We are seeking an experienced Senior Program Manager to lead a strategic IT portfolio supporting a critical business area.

This highly visible leadership role combines accountability for major technology initiatives, operational service delivery, and enhancement roadmaps across a complex software landscape. You will own portfolio outcomes including delivery execution, financial performance, resource planning, stakeholder engagement, risk management, and vendor oversight while partnering directly with IT and business Directors and Vice Presidents to deliver measurable business value.

Working closely with business and technology leaders, you will ensure the successful delivery of strategic programs, maintain reliable operations across business-critical platforms, and drive continuous enhancement initiatives. You will also play a key role in advancing AI-assisted software engineering and Spec-Driven Development practices across the portfolio.

What You’ll Do

Portfolio leadership and accountability

• Be accountable for IT delivery across given portfolio: run-and-maintain, enhancements, new projects and the new AI-first program.
• Own portfolio scope, budget, timelines, risks and outcomes. Keep one integrated plan and roadmap across all workstreams.
• Turn business strategy into a prioritized portfolio. Work with business leaders to build business cases, define measurable outcomes and decide trade-offs between new capability, technical debt and stability.
• Manage demand, capacity and funding. Track spend against budget and forecasts, and report variances early.

Spec-Driven Development program

• Lead the end-to-end delivery of the new program, from mobilization and operating-model design through releases and hand-over to operations.
• Set up the SDD delivery lifecycle: how specifications are written, reviewed and approved, how AI agents are used to build and test from them, and where human review and quality gates sit.
• Work with Architecture, Engineering, Quality, Cybersecurity and Compliance so that AI-assisted delivery meets Abbott policies, secure development practices and applicable regulatory requirements, including traceability and audit trails.
• Define and track the metrics that show the value of the approach, such as lead time, spec-to-release cycle time, defect escape rate, rework, cost per feature and AI-generated versus human-written code ratios.
• Build team capability: coach product owners, analysts, engineers and partners on spec writing and AI-assisted engineering. Share lessons so other portfolios can adopt the model.

Operations and service delivery

• Make sure production platforms meet agreed service levels for availability, incidents, problem management and hypercare after releases.
• Balance run and change work. Use operational data (incident trends, root causes, technical debt) to steer the roadmap.

Stakeholder and executive management

• Act as the main delivery contact for Directors and VPs. Run portfolio and program reviews, steering committees and executive updates with clear, data-driven reporting.
• Bring forward risks, dependencies and decisions early, with options and recommendations.
• Build trust across business units, IT functions and strategic suppliers.

Global team and partner leadership

• Lead and develop a distributed team of program and project managers, delivery leads and analysts, plus vendor teams, across multiple geographies and time zones.
• Create a delivery rhythm that works across regions: clear ownership, overlap hours, written decision records and shared tooling.
• Manage strategic delivery partners and system integrators, including statements of work, commercial terms, performance and the supplier mix.

Quality and compliance

• Ensure all delivery follows corporate and divisional policies, SDLC and change-control procedures, data-privacy rules and applicable external regulations.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of IT delivery experience, including at least 5 years leading large, multi-team programs or portfolios with multi-million-dollar budgets.
• Hands-on experience delivering software with a Spec-Driven Development or AI-first approach: using structured specifications as the source for AI-assisted code generation and testing, with clear review gates. Applicants should be ready to describe real outcomes.
• Experience setting up or scaling AI-assisted engineering practices (for example AI coding agents and assistants) in an enterprise setting, including governance, quality controls and adoption.
• Proven track record of leading teams and partners across several geographies and time zones.
• Experience presenting to and influencing senior leadership, including steering committees and executive reporting.
• Experience owning both operations / run and new delivery within one portfolio.
• Strong knowledge of Agile and scaled delivery methods (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe or similar) and tools such as Jira and Confluence.
• Strong financial management: budgeting, forecasting, business cases and vendor commercials.
• Excellent written and spoken English. Clear, structured communicator.

What We Offer Attractive compensation package that includes competitive pay and structure Bonus, as well as benefits such as:

• Private Health Insurance for you and your family
• Occupational Pension Scheme with an excellence contribution rate
• Bonus Target
• Life assurance
• Career Development
• Growing business plus access to many more benefits

The base pay for this position is

In specific locations, the pay range may vary from the range posted.

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