Director, Program Management Office

The Voleon Group; Berkeley (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Referral Bonus Program

Job summary

The Voleon Group, a tech-driven investment firm in Berkeley, seeks a Director of the Program Management Office to build and scale a PMO that accelerates delivery while aligning Research and Engineering during rapid growth.

The role leads a team of Technical Program Managers and PMs, partners with executives to turn strategy into programs, and defines metrics to improve predictability and decision-making.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in program, portfolio, or delivery leadership roles with 5+ years of people management.
• Experience building or scaling a PMO in hyper-growth environments.
• Ability to design org structures, career ladders, and leadership layers for distributed teams.
• Hands-on with execution frameworks like Agile/Scrum and adapting them at scale.
• Experience setting up modern PM tools (Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet, Excel/Docs, genAI) for planning and delivery insights.
• Strong leadership, coaching, and advocacy for teams with senior leadership.
• Proven ability to influence across levels without formal authority and high EI.
• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale the PMO with org structure, career paths, and leadership layers.
• Establish scalable planning, delivery, and reporting standards to boost outcomes.
• Partner with executives to translate strategy into executable programs and projects.
• Lead and develop a high-performing PMO/PM team, including hiring and succession planning.

Skills

Agile

Scrum

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Coaching

Mentoring

Emotional intelligence

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a technical field

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Smartsheet

Excel/Google docs

genAI

Job description

Voleon is a technology company that applies state-of-the-art AI and machine learning techniques to real-world problems in finance. For nearly two decades, we have led our industry and worked at the frontier of applying AI/ML to investment management. We have become a multibillion-dollar asset manager, and we have ambitious goals for the future.

Your colleagues will include internationally recognized experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning research as well as highly experienced finance and technology professionals. In addition to our enriching and collegial working environment, we offer highly competitive compensation and benefits packages, technology talks by our experts, a beautiful modern office, daily catered lunches, and more.

The Director of the Program Management Office (PMO) will build and scale a PMO that drives delivery and successful outcomes as Voleon experiences rapid growth. This role focuses on improving how work gets planned, prioritized, and delivered—while strengthening alignment across our Research and Engineering teams during a period of significant expansion.

Responsibilities

Build & Scale the PMO

• Build and scale the Program Management Office, including organizational structure, role definitions, career paths, and leadership layers, while maintaining a high hiring and onboarding bar during rapid growth

• Establish scalable, lightweight standards for planning, delivery, and reporting that improve consistency and outcomes without slowing teams down

• Adapt delivery models, processes, and tooling to support increasing organizational size, complexity, and geographic distribution

Strategic Partnership & Execution

• Partner with executive leadership to translate strategic goals into executable programs and projects

• Establish visibility into priorities, capacity, dependencies, risks, and delivery progress

• Define and operationalize meaningful metrics to improve predictability, transparency, and decision-making

• Lead and evolve operational practices in scaled environments while adapting frameworks to organizational context

People Leadership

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team of Technical Program Managers and Program Managers, including hiring, coaching, mentoring, and succession planning

• Advocate for PMO capacity, workload, and professional development with senior leadership

• Create an environment of psychological safety, continuous improvement, and shared ownership during periods of growth and change

Organizational Influence & Change Leadership

• Navigate and align stakeholders with differing priorities and opinions, driving clarity and decisions with diplomacy and conviction.

• Communicate clearly with executives about progress, risks, trade-offs, and required decisions

• Lead organizational change thoughtfully, challenging existing processes when they no longer serve the organization while respecting what works

Requirements

• 10+ years in program, portfolio, or delivery leadership roles, with at least 5 years of people management experience

• Proven experience building or scaling a PMO in a hyper-growth environment (startup scale-up or high-growth division)

• Demonstrated ability to design organizational structures, career ladders, and leadership layers, including experience with geographically distributed teams

• Hands-on expertise with execution and delivery frameworks, such as Agile methodologies, particularly Scrum, including experience adapting frameworks for different organizational contexts and operating at scale

• Experience with setting up and driving adoption of modern project management and productivity tools (Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet, Excel/Google docs, genAI) to support prioritization, resourcing and delivery insights

• Strong human-centric leadership skills, including coaching, mentoring, and advocating for team with senior leadership

• Proven ability to influence across levels and functions without formal authority, with high emotional intelligence

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field

"Friends of Voleon" Candidate Referral Program

If you have a great candidate in mind for this role and would like to have the potential to earn $7,500 if your referred candidate is successfully hired and employed by The Voleon Group, please use this form to submit your referral. For more details regarding eligibility, terms and conditions please make sure to review the Voleon Referral Bonus Program.

Equal Opportunity Employer

The Voleon Group is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.

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