Sr Mgr, Portfolio Management

Senior Portfolio Manager

Lake Forest or Chicago, IL

About Grainger:

Grainger is North America's leading distributor of maintenance, repair, and operating products and services. Our wide assortment, deep expertise, innovative technology solutions and unparalleled customer service keep customers' operations running and their people safe.

We're looking for passionate people who can move our company forward. We have a welcoming workplace where you can build a career for yourself while fulfilling our purpose to keep the world working. We embrace new ways of thinking and recognize everyone is an individual. Find your way at Grainger.

Position Details:

At Grainger, we are building systems to extend our market leadership for another 90 years. While lots of companies talk about "digital revolutions" or "delightful experiences", we're focusing on building solutions that matter. Our expertise comes from a profound understanding of our customer and their needs, and how our products and services create value for them. We appreciate dealing with complexity and scalability problems that few companies are privileged enough to enjoy. We are looking for Sr. Portfolio Managers to help guide and chart a course for Grainger's enterprise systems and application development so that Grainger continues to be the destination for "the ones that get it done".

The Sr. Portfolio Manager assumes the overarching responsibility for supporting the IT leadership and organization in managing the entire lifecycle of IT investments and programs to achieve the enterprise goals. The Sr. Portfolio Manager manages complex projects to help Grainger provide the tools to improve the customer experience through-out the customer's journey across multiple digital channels. This work tends to intersect into many IT and business teams, so it requires orchestration and influence. The Sr. Portfolio Manager will be a main contact for all team member questions and issues around IT projects. The Sr. Portfolio Manager will understand the business functions, including goals and strategies, industry trends, strategic partner relationships, executives and decision makers, and competitive position in the marketplace. You will report to the Portfolio Director.

You Will:

Orchestrate portfolio management processes throughout the lifecycle, including demand management, resource management, execution, and financial management. There is heavy emphasis on identifying and quantifying the impact of decisions required to accommodate new demand.

Understand the project ask, gather requirements and definitions, and dive into root cause of the problem being solved including processes and potential business improvements and ensure all initial stages of project are met (requirements, design, funding).

Ensure project delivery, including coordination of ceremonies and issue resolution. Manage communication to all groups including your team, peripheral teams, and executive sponsors.

Accomplish financial goals by getting approvals from business and IT partners through building a business case, describing value creation, submitting accurate monthly forecasts, managing the budget through forecasting requirements, analyzing variances, and initiating corrective action.

Other key activities include:

• Work with global, senior level leaders to help translate business strategies into technical project execution - operating at both the strategic and tactical level to manage team member expectations and perceptions.
• Interpret our challenges and recommend best practices to improve products, processes, or services.
• Lead others to identify creative solutions.
• Capture and voice the IT Portfolio Roadmap. Identify dependencies and conflicts and resolve them.
• Provide consolidated list of requirements to engineering teams.
• Describe value of the project via creation of a financial business case or other mediums and highlight tracking to ensure value was captured upon project completion.
• Contribute towards achievement of customer, operational, project or service goals; work is guided by functional policies.

You Have:

You will have an IT and business background with financial acumen that enables you to guide an engagement and interact at the highest levels of the enterprise. You will have the technical depth, business experience and financial understanding to easily communicate the benefits of their work. You will have familiarity with the development process, and how injecting value and economic discussions can help accelerate plans.

We are looking for:

• BA/BS in Computer Science or similar subject or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in IT product or portfolio management or project management.
• Experience managing large IT bodies of work from ideation through delivery.
• Experience operating in an agile/scrum context.
• Solid ability to translate technical verbiage into easily understandable language for non-technical audiences.
• Ability to communicate difficult concepts and encourage others to adopt a different point of view.
• Oversee dependencies across the programs within the portfolio; identify and reduce risks or promote the escalation of such.

Our Benefits:

• Comprehensive healthcare plans
• PTO and family leave
• Retirement plans

DE&I Statement

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.