Senior Director, R&D PMO & Innovation Excellence

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Director, R&D PMO & Innovation Excellence based in the United States. This is a senior strategic leadership role focused on transforming enterprise priorities into disciplined, measurable execution. You will lead the R&D PMO while shaping the governance, planning, resource allocation, and portfolio-management practices that guide major initiatives. The role provides broad visibility across R&D, product development, transformation, commercialization, and integration programs. You will work closely with executive and cross-functional leaders to prioritize investments, manage dependencies and risks, and accelerate value delivery. A major focus will be embedding needs-driven innovation practices that connect customer and market needs to viable concepts and successful implementation. You will also build organizational capabilities through strong teams, repeatable processes, playbooks, communities of practice, and leadership development. This opportunity is ideal for an experienced portfolio and innovation leader who can bring clarity to complexity and turn strategy into sustained business outcomes. Lead and continuously enhance the enterprise R&D PMO operating model, establishing effective portfolio governance, decision rights, reporting cadences, escalation mechanisms, standard processes, and program-management capabilities. Build and maintain a reliable enterprise-wide view of the strategic portfolio, including initiative ownership, objectives, milestones, dependencies, risks, resource requirements, investments, and expected value realization. Partner with executive and functional leaders to translate strategic priorities into an executable portfolio and facilitate prioritization, stage-gate, investment, continuation, acceleration, and risk-management decisions. Establish repeatable needs-driven innovation practices across R&D and product development, covering customer observation, problem definition, need screening, concept development, prototyping, evidence planning, and implementation readiness. Provide executive oversight for complex, high-risk, and cross-functional programs, ensuring alignment across R&D, Product Management, Commercial, Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, Regulatory, Finance, IT/Digital, Legal, and other stakeholders. Improve portfolio decision-making through integrated planning, resource and capacity management, business-case evaluation, risk analysis, and executive-level reporting. Monitor delivery performance and benefits realization, identifying risks, dependencies, resource constraints, and opportunities to improve execution. Build and develop a high-performing PMO and innovation excellence organization through coaching, talent development, performance management, communities of practice, and structured learning. Develop reusable tools, playbooks, governance frameworks, and operating practices that strengthen program-management maturity across the organization. Promote consistent innovation and portfolio-management disciplines while ensuring teams remain focused on customer value, business impact, and implementation readiness. Provide senior leadership with clear insights and recommendations that support investment decisions, strategic trade-offs, and long-term portfolio performance. Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in engineering, science, business, operations, or a related discipline; an advanced degree such as an MBA, master’s degree, or doctorate is preferred. Typically 15+ years of progressive leadership experience across portfolio management, program management, product development, innovation, operations, transformation, or related disciplines. At least 7 years of experience leading complex cross-functional programs and/or PMO organizations . Demonstrated success building, transforming, or leading an enterprise or business-unit PMO, with measurable