Senior Program Manager (Federal IT Portfolio and Delivery)

About this role

Senior Program Manager (Federal IT Portfolio and Delivery)

Location : Washington, DC metro area — remote with occasional on-site presence; local residency required

Clearance : Public Trust Tier 2 (Moderate Background Investigation)

The Senior Program Manager is responsible for leading delivery of an enterprise IT portfolio governance and software delivery program for a federal agency Office of the Chief Information Officer. This is a working delivery role rather than a contract administration role. The position owns the integrated roadmap, leads the monthly government performance review, and clears the dependencies and risks that slow delivery. This role works closely with government product managers, architects, security staff, and business office stakeholders, and serves as the single accountable point of contact for a ten-person delivery team supporting an agency that has adopted a product operating model with constrained resources.

Level: Senior — 10+ years

Location: Remote, with occasional on-site presence in Washington, DC. Candidates must currently reside in the Washington, DC metropolitan area (DC, Maryland, or Northern Virginia). Relocation is not offered.

Clearance: Public Trust Tier 2 (Moderate Background Investigation). U.S. Citizen a Must. An active Tier 2 Public Trust or higher is strongly preferred.

Key Responsibilities

Program Delivery and Roadmap Management

• Own and publish the integrated roadmap across all products, projects, and services, including dependencies, milestones, and forecast ranges.
• Maintain cost and schedule baselines, perform variance analysis, and produce forecast completion ranges rather than single-point dates.
• Run weekly delivery and schedule reviews; surface forecast slips early and present recovery options while options remain.
• Lead transition-in activities including phase-in scheduling, knowledge transfer, and security processing coordination.

Portfolio Governance and Investment Prioritization

• Establish and operate the intake path for new technology requests from business offices, including published response commitments.
• Apply investment review criteria — business value, user impact, strategic alignment, cost, and feasibility — and present sequencing options with displacement consequences stated.
• Support the portfolio review board, architecture review board, and standards working group with decision-ready packages.
• Report savings, avoided cost, and realized value alongside delivery results.

Performance Management and Reporting

• Lead the monthly government performance review covering roadmap progress, delivery and outcome metrics, team status, risks, and issues requiring government decision.
• Establish baselines and targets for every reported measure so improvement can be demonstrated rather than asserted.
• Maintain quarterly roadmap and release commitments and the reasoning behind each prioritization decision.

Risk, Change, and Dependency Management

• Maintain a single register for risks, issues, dependencies, and governance action items, each with an owner, trigger, due date, and closure criteria.
• Escalate cross-team dependencies, funding constraints, and enterprise blockers through the appropriate governance path with analysis already prepared.
• Track board decisions and action items to closure and report open items until they close.

Team Leadership and Customer Engagement

• Coach and rebalance a small senior team; identify and address performance issues before they become customer-visible.
• Serve as the primary customer interface and maintain daily communication cadence during transition and critical periods.
• Coordinate corporate reach-back for quality, staffing, contracts, and compliance support.

Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• A graduate degree in management, information systems, engineering, or a related field is preferred but not required.

Experience

• 10+ years managing IT programs or projects, including at least 5 years in a federal environment.
• 5+ years in portfolio or product management, including roadmap ownership and investment prioritization.
• Demonstrated experience leading recurring performance reviews with senior or executive government stakeholders.
• Experience managing cost and schedule baselines, variance analysis, and enterprise risk registers.
• Experience supporting a federal Office of the Chief Information Officer or an agency IT governance board.

Technical Skills

• Hands-on proficiency with an enterprise portfolio platform — ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (also known as ITBM or PPM) strongly preferred; Jira Align, Planview, or Clarity acceptable.
• Working knowledge of Agile delivery in both Scrum and Kanban and the measures each produces: velocity, story points, cycle time, backlog age, and lead time to change.
• Proficiency with Azure DevOps or Jira for delivery tracking, and Power BI or a comparable reporting tool.
• Familiarity with federal IT investment reporting, capital planning, or the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act scorecard.
• Familiarity with OMB Circular A-11 Section 280 customer experience reporting.

Certifications (Preferred)

• Project Management Professional (PMP)
• ITIL Foundation v4 or higher
• Program Management Professional (PgMP) or SAFe Agilist
• Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or Professional Scrum Master (PSM)

Preferred Competencies

• Demonstrated ability to reduce process burden rather than add to it.
• Experience supporting a customer through a workforce reduction or contractor transition.
• Strong facilitation skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong documentation skills for program, governance, and performance records.

Work Arrangement and Travel

This position is remote-first. Expect to be on site in Washington, DC a few days per month for customer meetings, quarterly planning, and team offsites, scheduled in advance. Standard business hours, Eastern time, Monday through Friday, with occasional scheduled maintenance windows planned in advance.

About OmniVista Consulting. OmniVista is an 8(a)-certified, minority-owned Economically Disadvantaged Woman-Owned Small Business delivering enterprise IT services to federal customers since 2013. This role supports a federal agency; the agency is identified during the interview process. OmniVista is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.

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