IT Operations & Portfolio Excellence Director

Merck & Co.

Rahway (NJ)

Hybrid

USD 256,000 - 403,000

Full time

3 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) retirement benefits

Paid holidays and vacation

Job summary

Merck & Co. in Rahway, NJ is seeking an Executive Director to lead IT operations and portfolio excellence. This pivotal role reports to the Chief Information & Digital Officer (CIDO) and oversees enterprise IT governance, portfolio health, and ROI realization across the organization.

You will drive Lean/Agile processes, FinOps practices, and AI-enabled improvements to speed and quality of IT delivery. You will partner with the IT Leadership Team to ensure technology investments deliver tangible

Qualifications

Minimum of 15 years of leadership experience spanning IT strategy, technology business operations, enterprise PMO/portfolio management, IT financial operations, or management consulting within large-scale, matrixed environments.
Portfolio scale: governing and optimizing technology portfolios across federated business units, global cost centers, and complex global accounts.
Bachelor's degree required; MBA/MS preferred.
Expertise in ITIL v4, Lean / Six Sigma, OKR, Agile portfolio frameworks (SAFe / Lean Portfolio Management), and cloud FinOps.
Data-driven governance: automated dashboards and meaningful KPIs to guide decisions.
Experience with leading IT platforms such as Apptio Target Process, SAP, Power BI, Jira.

Responsibilities

Govern the global technology investment portfolio with transparent demand intake criteria, rigorous business case validation, prioritization frameworks, and phase-gating across corporate and divisional teams.
Deploy predictive capacity models to balance incoming divisional demand against delivery capacity, eliminating bottlenecks.
Measure, audit, and report post-implementation value capture and ROI for major transformation initiatives to executive stakeholders.
Maintain an enterprise-wide view of portfolio interdependencies, budget variances, and delivery risks with proactive mitigation playbooks.
Design and manage unified IT dashboards, performance reporting agents, and balanced scorecards tracking key indicators like MTTR/MTBF, cost-to-serve, and deployment frequency.
Synthesize complex IT portfolio data into concise executive briefings and presentations.