Sr Director - Head of Portfolio & Program Management R&D

Overview

The Head of R&D Program & Portfolio Management Office (PMO), Senior Director provides strategic leadership for program and portfolio management across the Advanced Diagnostics R&D organization. This leader translates business and R&D strategy into an executable portfolio, establishes rigorous governance and prioritization, and drives disciplined execution across new product development, technology, and product lifecycle programs.

The role serves as a strategic partner to R&D and segment leadership, providing a holistic view of portfolio priorities, investments, resources, risks, and execution performance. The position leads the R&D PMO organization and is accountable for strengthening portfolio management, governance, prioritization, resource planning, and program execution.

Responsibilities

• Portfolio Strategy & Prioritization: Lead R&D portfolio planning and prioritization across new product development, technology, line extensions, and R&D-led sustaining programs. Facilitate investment and portfolio trade-off decisions based on strategic value, customer need, financial return, risk, and organizational capacity.
• Program Governance & Execution: Establish and continuously improve R&D program-management standards, stage-gate governance, and execution disciplines. Ensure programs have clear scope, milestones, budgets, resources, risks, and accountabilities, with timely escalation and recovery planning.  Partners closely with Waters Enterprise team to define future stage-gate processes that are right-sized for IVD Diagnostics.
• Resource & Capacity Planning: Translate portfolio priorities into forward-looking resource and capability requirements. Partner with functional leaders to identify capacity constraints and determine appropriate hiring, external-resource, sequencing, and prioritization actions.
• Financial & Investment Governance: Partner with R&D leadership and Finance to manage annual and multi-year R&D investment planning, forecasting, and budget performance, ensuring resources are aligned with the highest-priority programs. The existing PMO model includes R&D budget management, forecast-versus-actual reviews, and portfolio resource management.
• PMO Leadership & Talent Development: Lead and develop a high-performing organization of program, project, and portfolio-management professionals. Establish clear roles, competencies, career paths, and performance expectations while building strong succession and leadership capability.
• Executive & Cross-Functional Leadership: Serve as the senior PMO partner to R&D and segment leadership, collaborating across Product Management, Commercial, Finance, Quality, Regulatory, Operations, Supply Chain, and other functions to drive decisions, resolve trade-offs, and deliver business outcomes.
• PMO Excellence & Transformation: Define the R&D PMO strategy and maturity roadmap, standardize tools and processes, strengthen data-driven decision-making, and continuously improve portfolio visibility, governance effectiveness, and execution predictability. The current Advanced Diagnostics PMO model emphasizes portfolio outcomes, prioritization frameworks, budget and capacity transparency, and scalable PMO practices.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, science, business, life sciences, or related field required; Master's degree or MBA preferred.
• 15+ years of progressive experience in program management, portfolio management, R&D, product development, engineering, or related leadership roles.
• 7+ years of people-leadership experience, preferably leading managers and senior program-management professionals.
• Demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional product-development portfolios in a global matrix organization.
• Experience in medical devices, diagnostics, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, or another highly regulated industry strongly preferred.
• Strong expertise in portfolio prioritization, resource and capacity planning, financial management, product-development governance, risk management, and executive decision support.
• Proven ability to lead organizational transformation and build scalable PMO capabilities.