IT Project Portfolio Lead — Strategic PMO & Delivery

Virginia's Community College System; Richmond (VA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 115,000; Full time

Job summary

Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) invites applications for Assistant Director, IT Project Portfolio Management. The role oversees a portfolio of technology initiatives in Fairfax County and supervises a small PM staff, coordinating across IT and business units to ensure college objectives are met.

This leadership position requires program management, governance, and cloud-transition experience, with emphasis on delivering high-visibility projects on time and within budget.

Qualifications

• Ability to manage multiple priorities and a heavy workload in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to read, interpret, and communicate project procedures, technical requirements, and business processes.
• Strong organizational skills with attention to detail, documentation accuracy, and adherence to deadlines.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with technical teams and troubleshoot issues related to project dependencies, system changes, or cloud transitions.
• Knowledge of core project management practices, SDLC, documentation standards, and governance processes.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate daily project activities, schedules, deliverables, and status reporting across multiple concurrent projects.
• Supervises a small staff of one to two project management professionals while personally managing the College’s most complex and highest-visibility technology projects.
• Directs technical staff drawn from other IT units, functional subject matter experts from across the College, and external vendor resources.
• Serve as a communication bridge between technical and business teams, including developers, analysts, product managers, QA, and security.
• Support planning, scope clarification, resource coordination, and execution activities—especially for cloud‑based initiatives and system transitions.
• Track dependencies, risks, issues, and timelines; elevate concerns with clear, actionable recommendations.
• Contribute to the creation, improvement, and maintenance of PMO project management governance, standards, templates, dashboards, and documentation.
• Provide guidance to ensure consistency in documentation, tracking, reporting, and governance.
• Coordinate with business analysts on requirements and with technical teams on dependencies, integration points, and environment readiness.
• Communicate project updates to stakeholders with transparency around progress, milestones, risks, and impacts.
• Assist with portfolio‑level reporting and PMO process improvements to strengthen delivery maturity.
• Evaluate technology constraints, system impacts, data considerations, and integration requirements during planning.
• Make regular requests from employees for updates and input on college decisions and share feedback with supervisors for inclusion in the NOVA Brief.

Skills

Project management

Stakeholder communication

Cloud technologies

Team leadership

Risk and governance

Microsoft Office

Tools

Jira

Azure DevOps

SharePoint

MS Project

Job description

Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) invites applications for Assistant Director, IT Project Portfolio Management. The role oversees a portfolio of technology initiatives in Fairfax County and supervises a small PM staff, coordinating across IT and business units to ensure college objectives are met.

This leadership position requires program management, governance, and cloud-transition experience, with emphasis on delivering high-visibility projects on time and within budget.