Strategic PMO Director — Portfolio & Excellence Lead

Confidential Careers; Riyadh; On-site; SAR 320,000 - 390,000; Full time

Job summary

Confidential Careers is seeking a Director PMO/PMO Manager to lead corporate PMO governance and CoE activities across regions. The role collaborates with executive leadership, business units, and regional leaders to standardize delivery, reporting, and controls.

You will drive knowledge management, local content development, and change leadership while aligning with corporate strategy and governance requirements across projects.

Qualifications

• Recognized project management or program management certification is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the corporate PMO mandate, operating model, governance framework, and service offering.
• Establish proportionate project and portfolio controls, including stage gates, approval authorities, reporting requirements, escalation routes, and assurance reviews.
• Create a consolidated view of the project portfolio, covering scope, schedule, cost, cash flow, risk, resource demand, change, quality, safety, and commercial exposure.
• Provide executive leadership with timely, evidence-based reporting on portfolio performance, emerging risks, decisions required, and corrective actions.
• Coordinate portfolio planning, prioritization, capacity reviews, and strategic alignment with business and regional leaders.
• Promote consistent use of project management and project controls practices across bids, mobilization, engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, and closeout.
• Work with project leadership to identify troubled or strategically significant projects and support recovery planning, assurance, and escalation.
• Monitor the effectiveness of governance and controls, adapting them to project size, contract type, delivery model, and risk.
• Support governance of joint ventures, consortia, and subcontracted delivery arrangements where applicable, in coordination with accountable business leaders.
• Establish and lead a Project Management Center of Excellence (CoE) with standards, tools, guidance, and templates.
• Develop a PM framework covering lifecycle, roles, planning, controls, risk, contracts, reporting, and handover.
• Provide templates, playbooks, maturity assessments, and guidance adaptable to regions and environments.
• Define capability expectations for PMs and key control roles, partnering with HR and leaders on development paths.
• Coordinate communities of practice and peer reviews to share effective approaches across projects.
• Promote continuous improvement using performance data, assurance findings, and lessons learned to refine standards and ways of working.
• Encourage disciplined use of digital project tools and data practices in collaboration with IT and project teams.
• Develop a knowledge management approach to capture, validate, preserve, and reuse project knowledge.
• Establish structured lessons‑learned processes at bid, mobilization, execution, commissioning, and closeout.
• Ensure lessons have owners and are incorporated into standards or training where appropriate.
• Curate technical, commercial, delivery, and regional knowledge in accessible repositories with security controls.
• Promote knowledge exchange while protecting confidential and client-owned information.
• Work with engineering, procurement, construction, quality, safety, and commercial leaders to identify repeatable practices.
• Establish a corporate approach for identifying and managing local content commitments with regional leadership, procurement, HR, and project teams.
• Translate applicable local content requirements into measurable plans, responsibilities, reporting, and delivery actions.
• Promote participation by local suppliers and workforce in line with project needs and requirements.
• Encourage supplier development and knowledge transfer to build local capability.
• Monitor local content performance with auditable records and clear data definitions.
• Coordinate with regional teams to identify local market capacity, constraints, and development opportunities.
• Keep local content plans aligned with contract obligations, laws and procurement ethics.
• Build a high-performing corporate PMO and related capabilities; balance oversight with delivery realities.
• Influence senior leaders and project teams across a matrix organization.
• Lead adoption of governance and management practices through engagement, training, and communication.
• Establish constructive relationships with regional and project teams.
• Represent the PMO in executive reviews, portfolio boards, and governance forums.
• Model ethical conduct and accountability.

Job description

Confidential Careers is seeking a Director PMO/PMO Manager to lead corporate PMO governance and CoE activities across regions. The role collaborates with executive leadership, business units, and regional leaders to standardize delivery, reporting, and controls.

You will drive knowledge management, local content development, and change leadership while aligning with corporate strategy and governance requirements across projects.