Head of PMO

Responsibilities

- Define the PMO's vision, mandate, operating model, and multi-year roadmap in partnership with other department Leadership

- Establish the PMO as a hub-and-spoke function: direct accountability for the enterprise Hub, with a dotted-line coordination model to the program managers embedded in the business.

- Define clear roles, decision rights, engagement models, and escalation paths across the hub-and-spoke model, so it is always clear what the PMO decides, what each Program Lead decides, and where the two need to align.

Governance & Standards

- Establish company-wide program management standards, playbooks, templates, and minimum controls, with common definitions for scope, milestones, financials, resources, risks, issues, dependencies, and value realization.

- Determine the right mix of agile, hybrid, and traditional delivery discipline for a given initiative based on its complexity, risk, and business need.

- Lead independent health reviews and recovery planning for strategically important initiatives when a program needs more support or intervention than it can generate on its own.

Team Leadership (the Hub)

- Hire, manage, and mentor the PMO's core team to support the programs execution objectives setting departmental budgets, performance targets, and career paths.

- Coordinate, without directing, the program managers matrixed into Fusion and Defense, ensuring they share a common practice and community even though they report through their programs day to day.

- Build enterprise program management capability company-wide through assessment, coaching, communities of practice, and talent development — for the PMO's own staff and for program managers embedded in Fusion and Defense.

Qualifications

- Experience: 15+ years in program, portfolio, or PMO leadership, including demonstrated success building, transforming, or resetting a PMO or portfolio management function — establishing its mandate, operating model, governance routines, standards, and adoption roadmap, not just running one that already existed.

- Experience leading large, complex programs (billion-dollar scale preferred) within an engineering-intensive environment (semiconductor, laser, nuclear, space and defense, or similar).

- Experience operating across a matrixed organization and influencing program leaders, functional leaders, and executives without relying on direct authority.

- Experience working in ambiguous environment and demonstrated proficiency in building order and clarity from loosely defined problems.

- Experience leading or supporting a hub-and-spoke PMO model, with direct accountability for a central function and dotted-line relationships to embedded or divisional program managers.

- Strong business and financial acumen — able to connect strategy, execution, financial outcomes, capacity planning, investment choices, and measurable value.

- Exceptional executive presence and communication skills, including the ability to simplify complex portfolio information and facilitate tradeoff decisions with senior leadership.

- Comfortable introducing governance and standards in an engineering, science, or hardware-intensive environment without slowing technical teams down.

- Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum

Desired

- Demonstrated proficiency in one or more core engineering disciplines, such as Nuclear, Aerospace, Laser, Optics, Electrical or Mechanical

- Experience with design and construction of one of a kind prototype systems

- Experience in national laboratory, aerospace, defense, energy, or another engineering/science-intensive, regulated, or export-controlled environment.

- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance, given this role's oversight of PMO staff and reporting that touch the Defense program; U.S. citizenship is required for clearance eligibility.

Candidates may be considered for other positions at Xcimer Energy, and our actual base salary will be determined on an individual basis and may vary based on job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience. The range is published in accordance with Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act and California Equal Pay Act.