Vice President, Project Management Lead

About the Role

Grade Level (for internal use):

15

The Team

The Portfolio Management team drives enterprise-wide strategic agendas with cross-functional authority and visibility. The team partners closely with senior business leaders to bring structure, rigor, strategic clarity, and integrated oversight to the organization’s most critical decisions and initiatives. Operating at the intersection of business strategy, financial performance, and operational execution, the team shapes prioritization, resource allocation, governance, and delivery across a complex global organization.

The Role

The Vice President, Project Management Lead is a senior enterprise leader accountable for the end-to-end governance and execution of a portfolio of complex strategic programs, with a particular focus on M&A, integrations, separations, and enterprise transformation. The role establishes the delivery architecture, decision forums, operating cadence, and performance transparency required to move initiatives from strategy through execution and value realization.

Working across business units, corporate functions, workstream leaders, transaction owners, external advisors, and suppliers, the Vice President creates alignment where authority is distributed, anticipates enterprise-level risks, and enables timely executive decisions. The role is expected to combine strategic judgment, financial and commercial acumen, rigorous program leadership, and the presence to influence C-suite and Executive Committee stakeholders.

Responsibilities and Impact

• Enterprise Portfolio and Program Leadership

• Own enterprise portfolio and project management for priority M&A and strategic transformation initiatives, from initial mobilization and planning through execution, Day 1 readiness, stabilization, and value realization.

• Design the end-to-end program structure, including scope, outcomes, workstreams, governance, decision rights, integrated plans, milestones, deliverables, critical paths, dependencies, resourcing assumptions, and escalation protocols.

• Translate enterprise strategy and transaction objectives into executable roadmaps with clear accountabilities, measurable outcomes, and transparent progress against commitments.

• Lead multiple interconnected initiatives as an integrated portfolio, balancing strategic value, capacity, risk, timing, cost, and organizational readiness.

• Provide direct leadership and strategic support to the applicable Project Management Office lead, workstream PMs, and functional delivery teams, establishing consistent standards and ways of working.

• Governance and Executive Decision Support

• Establish and chair effective governance routines, including executive steering committees, portfolio reviews, transaction management forums, workstream reviews, and risk and readiness sessions.

• Clarify decision rights and escalation paths; maintain a disciplined record of critical decisions, assumptions, dependencies, open issues, and executive actions.

• Prepare concise, decision-oriented materials for C-suite and Executive Committee audiences, including portfolio dashboards, investment scorecards, readiness views, risk and dependency analyses, and recommendations.

• Synthesize complex inputs across functions and workstreams into a coherent enterprise narrative that highlights choices, trade-offs, implications, and required decisions.

• Ensure governance is proportionate to program complexity and enables pace without compromising control, accountability, or quality.

• M&A, Integration and Separation Execution

• Develop and manage the integrated transaction plan, including milestones, deliverables, critical paths, Day 1 readiness, integration or separation priorities, transition activities, and post-close stabilization.

• Coordinate critical cross-functional workstreams, which may include Transition Service Agreements, operating model design, technology and data separation, revenue reconciliation, finance, people, legal, compliance, communications, commercial readiness, and customer continuity.

• Drive scope clarity across each workstream, explicitly defining what is in scope, out of scope, deferred, dependent on another decision, or subject to transitional arrangements.

• Connect transaction strategy to operational execution, ensuring interdependencies are visible and that functional plans converge into an integrated enterprise outcome.

• Partner with transaction owners and external advisors to maintain pace, resolve ambiguity, and adapt plans as deal assumptions or business conditions evolve.

• Financial Oversight and Value Realization

• Partner with Finance and business leaders to build and maintain the integrated financial view of the portfolio, including approved investment, transaction-related costs, synergies, dis-synergies, ongoing run-rate impacts, and value capture.

• Establish benefit-realization disciplines that connect business cases to named owners, baselines, timing, milestones, performance measures, and executive reporting.

• Challenge financial assumptions and delivery forecasts, identify variance drivers, and ensure corrective actions are defined when value, cost, or timing moves off plan.

• Enable prioritization and resource-allocation decisions through transparent analysis of strategic value, financial return, capacity constraints, execution risk, and opportunity cost.

• Risk, Dependency and Readiness Management

• Own the enterprise view of program risk, issues, assumptions, and dependencies, with particular focus on cross-workstream impacts that may not be visible within individual functions.

• Anticipate execution barriers and decision bottlenecks; develop practical mitigation, contingency, and recovery plans before they threaten critical milestones.

• Define readiness criteria and evidence-based assessments for major milestones, including Day 1, cutover, launch, close, transition exit, and stabilization.

• Escalate material risks with clear context, business implications, options, and recommendations rather than reporting status alone.

• Ensure lessons learned are translated into stronger portfolio standards, reusable playbooks, and improved enterprise delivery capability.

• Stakeholder, Supplier and Team Leadership

• Influence and integrate senior leaders and delivery teams across a highly matrixed, global environment, frequently without direct or formal authority.

• Build trusted relationships with workstream leads, transaction owners, functional executives, external advisors, and suppliers while maintaining constructive challenge and accountability.

• Set clear expectations for delivery quality, communication, issue resolution, and executive engagement across internal teams and third parties.

• Lead, coach, and develop project and portfolio management talent; create clarity of roles, delegate effectively, and build a high-performing culture focused on outcomes and enterprise value.

• Model inclusive leadership, sound judgment, resilience, and calm execution in high-pressure and confidential environments.

• Portfolio Management Standards and Continuous Improvement

• Design and embed scalable portfolio-management standards, stage gates, prioritization models, templates, reporting disciplines, and benefit-realization practices.

• Use appropriate delivery methods, including predictive, Agile, SAFe, and hybrid approaches, based on the nature and risk profile of the initiative.

• Promote high-quality portfolio data and practical use of tools and analytics to improve transparency, forecasting, scenario planning, and executive decision-making.

• Act as an enterprise subject matter expert, applying external practices and internal lessons to strengthen the organization’s ability to execute complex change.

Compensation/Benefits Information: (This section is only applicable to US candidates)

S&P Global states that the anticipated base salary range for this position is $176,300 to $314,600. Final base salary for this role will be based on the individual’s geographic location, as well as experience level, skill set, training, licenses and certifications.

In addition to base compensation, this role is eligible for an annual incentive plan.

This role is eligible to receive additional S&P Global benefits. For more information on the benefits we provide to our employees, please click here.

What We’re Looking For

Basic Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business Administration, Economics, Engineering, Technology, or another relevant discipline.
• An S&P Global employee at this level would typically have 12+ years of progressive experience in enterprise program management, portfolio management, strategic planning, transformation, transaction execution, or related disciplines within a large-scale, matrixed organization.
• Demonstrated leadership of complex, cross-functional programs with material strategic, financial, operational, technology, customer, or organizational impact.
• Direct experience supporting M&A integration, separation, carve-out, joint venture, or major enterprise transformation initiatives.
• Proven ability to design and operate portfolio governance, including stage gates, prioritization, integrated planning, executive steering, risk management, readiness, and benefit-realization tracking.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, including business-case development, ROI analysis, budget oversight, forecast challenge, synergy tracking, and value-realization reporting.
• Executive presence and a proven record of presenting portfolio insights, strategic choices, and recommendations to C-suite and senior leadership audiences.
• Ability to lead through influence across organizational boundaries, reconcile competing priorities, and create accountability where reporting lines are distributed.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex issues and tailor the message across functions, levels, and cultures.
• Demonstrated discretion and judgment when handling confidential transaction, financial, people, customer, and organizational information.
• We require all external candidates who reach the final stage of our interview process to attend at least one in-person interview, ordinarily at the nearest S&P Global office. This must be completed before we can proceed to an offer.

Additional Preferred Qualifications

• Project Management Professional (PMP), Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP), PgMP, or an equivalent recognized certification.
• Experience applying Agile, SAFe, or hybrid portfolio management methods in a large enterprise environment.
• Hands-on experience with portfolio management platforms such as Planview, Clarity PPM, ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, or Microsoft Project Online.
• Proficiency with portfolio analytics and visualization tools, including Power BI or Tableau, to build executive-grade reporting and scenario views.
• Experience in financial data, information services, financial services, technology-enabled services, or capital markets environments.
• Experience working across geographies and time zones and leading programs with significant regulatory, data, technology, supplier, or change-management dependencies.

Leadership Capabilities

• Strategic orientation: connects enterprise priorities, transaction objectives, and portfolio choices to practical execution.
• Enterprise judgment: sees across functions, identifies second-order impacts, and makes balanced recommendations amid complexity and ambiguity.
• Execution discipline: creates pace, clarity, accountability, and follow-through across multiple senior stakeholders and workstreams.
• Constructive influence: challenges assumptions respectfully, resolves conflict, and aligns leaders around enterprise outcomes.
• Talent leadership: builds capability, sets a high bar, delegates effectively, and creates an inclusive environment in which teams can perform.
• Adaptability