Director, Project Portfolio Mgmt.

Providing for loved ones, planning rewarding retirements, saving enough for whatever lies ahead – our policyholders count on us to be there when it matters most. It’s a big ask, but it’s one that we have the power to deliver when we work together. We collaborate and innovate – pushing one another to transform not just Pacific Life, but the entire industry for the better. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. Pacific Life is more than a job, it’s a career with purpose. It’s a career where you have the support, balance, and resources to make a positive impact on the future – including your own.

We’re actively seeking a talented Project Portfolio Management Director to join our Portfolio and Program Management Office (PPMO) for our Consumer Markets Division, located in Newport Beach, CA. This role follows a hybrid schedule of four days in the office.  If you are not currently located near the office, we offer relocation assistance to well-qualified candidates. 

The Project Portfolio Management Director leads portfolio planning, governance, and execution discipline across the Consumer Markets Division. This role connects strategy to execution by strengthening portfolio planning, prioritization, capacity management, resource allocation, investment governance, and benefits realization practices.  The Director is a people leader for a team comprised of portfolio and planning experts. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Enterprise Portfolio Planning: Align CMD’s strategy, priorities, capacity, and funding with Enterprise to deliver the highest value outcomes for CMD and PL strategic objectives. 

• CMD Cross-Portfolio Planning: Integrate program planning and roadmaps to determine dependencies, sequencing, and trade-off decisioning.

• Reporting & Data-Driven Insights: Deliver decision-ready insights through executive-ready recommendations, and governance forums, dashboards, newsletters, and centralized repositories.

• Annuities & Life Program Increment (PI) Planning: Partner with release train engineers to align priorities and capacity against quarterly planning events across divisional and company level forums. 

• PPMO Standards & Playbooks: Strengthen portfolio and program delivery standards, methodologies, reporting practices and execution disciplines while preserving the agility needed to respond to changing business needs and aligning to Enterprise portfolio standards and COE.

• Stakeholder & Relationship Management: Partner with product, underwriting, operations, distribution, technology, finance, program, and project leaders to drive decisions and remove execution friction. 

What Success looks like:

• Portfolio decisions are faster, clearer, and grounded in strategic value, capacity constraints, critical risk mitigation, dependencies and trade-offs.

• CMD roadmaps, program planning and delivery governance materials are current, consistent, and decision-ready.

• Portfolio risks, issues, dependencies, sequencing conflicts, and capacity constraints are surfaced early with clear ownership. 

• Leaders have reliable insights and recommendations across functional, divisional and company levels for portfolio trade-off discussions.

• PPMO standards, playbooks, and planning routines are practical, adopted, and continuously improved.

• Connect Annuities & Life PI Planning with ways of working across the divisional functions in order to maximize investment returns and prioritize the highest value work.

Required experience:

• 10+ years in portfolio management, program management, project management, strategic planning, governance, or business transformation, including leadership of matrixed and direct teams.

• 4-year degree or equivalent experience

• Experience managing complex business and technology portfolios in a matrixed environment.

• Proven ability to diagnose business issues and recommend practical processes, operating models, and shared service improvements.

• Strong executive communication, facilitation, prioritization, stakeholder management, and influence skills.

• Experience with enterprise portfolio planning, cross-functional planning, prioritization, capacity planning, dependency mapping, sequencing and trade-offs, risk and financials management and value tracking.

• Ability to translate portfolio data into clear insights, dashboards, executive materials, and governance-ready recommendations.

• Experience with portfolio, project, reporting, and collaboration tools such as Planview, Smartsheet, Azure DevOps, Jira, SharePoint, Power BI, Kanban boards, dashboards, or similar platforms.

Preferred qualifications:

• Project Management Professional (PMP)®, Program Management Professional (PgMP)®, Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP)®, or PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®.

• SAFe® Agilist (SA), Lean Portfolio Management, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), or similar Agile / Lean certification.

• Experience supporting Agile PI Planning with Annuities & Life teams, RTEs, product leaders, and technology partners.

• Experience in regulated industries such as insurance, financial services, healthcare, or similar environments.

• Consulting experience or demonstrated ability to advise leaders, shape ambiguous problems, and build coalitions around pragmatic solutions.

• Advanced executive storytelling, data visualization, and decision support capabilities.

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The base pay range noted represents the company’s good faith minimum and maximum range for this role at the time of posting. The actual compensation offered to a candidate will be dependent upon several factors, including but not limited to experience, qualifications and geographic location. Also, most employees are eligible for additional incentive pay.

Pacific Life Insurance Company is an Equal Opportunity /Affirmative Action Employer, M/F/D/V. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran, you have the right to request an accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career center as a result of your disability. To request an accommodation, contact a Human Resources Representative at Pacific Life Insurance Company.