Director, Enterprise Strategic Initiatives

One team. Global challenges. Infinite opportunities. At Viasat, we're on a mission to deliver connections with the capacity to change the world. For more than 35 years, Viasat has helped shape how consumers, businesses, governments and militaries around the globe communicate. We're looking for people who think big, act fearlessly, and create an inclusive environment that drives positive impact to join our team.

We are thrilled to announce an exciting opportunity for a Director, Enterprise Strategic Initiatives to join our dynamic team in Carlsbad, CA! This is a hybrid, site-based role that offers the perfect blend of office collaboration and remote flexibility. Employees will work from our Carlsbad office 3-4 days per week within a standard five-day workweek, with the remaining days worked remotely.

The Director, Enterprise Strategic Initiatives is responsble for helping ensure deployment of strategy into measurable business outcomes and successful execution of the highest priority strategic initiatives. The Director owns the enterprise strategic portfolio and the operating system used to govern it. This role ensures the company's most critical initiatives are clearly defined, properly governed, rigorously measured, and aligned to enterprise OKRs. The Director establishes the standards, processes, and reporting cadence that provide executive leadership with a single, trusted view of portfolio health, benefits realization, risks, and execution progress.

The role serves as the steward of enterprise portfolio governance, helping defining what qualifies as an enterprise strategic initiative, establishing stage-gate standards, and ensuring consistent reporting and accountability across all initiatives. In addition, the Director personally leads the most critical cross-functional initiatives that require executive coordination, rapid decision-making, and disciplined execution.

Success in this position is measured by the organization's ability to focus resources on the highest-value work, deliver validated business outcomes, and sustain improvements over time.

This is not a traditional PMO leader. It is an enterprise owner responsible for governing enterprise investment and business outcomes. It is a builder's seat. The portfolio operating model, the templates, the cadence, and the credibility of the numbers reported to leadership will be shaped by the person in this role.

Portfolio Governance and Reporting

• Own enterprise-wide portfolio governance standards, including stage-gate processes, project lifecycle requirements, and executive oversight mechanisms.
• Establish and maintain a consistent reporting framework that provides leadership with a single, accurate view of portfolio status, risks, dependencies, benefits, and overall health.
• Steward enterprise portfolio management standards, ensuring consistency across business units, functions, and strategic initiatives.
• Own the enterprise portfolio operating model, including regular portfolio reviews, support executive steering forums, and related governance cadences.
• Drive governance reviews and escalation processes to improve decision quality, accountability, and execution discipline.
• Develop and maintain the standard reporting used to communicate portfolio performance and decision needs to executive leadership.
• Ensure portfolio reporting highlights actionable insights, critical risks, resource constraints, and required leadership decisions.
• Continuously improve portfolio management processes through data, automation, and AI-enabled reporting capabilities.

Compliance, Benefit Realization and Sustainment

• Lead benefit tracking in partnership with FP&A, ensuring committed benefits are quantified at approval, tracked through delivery, and validated after close.
• Apply earned value management (EVM) and other quantitative performance measures to integrate technical scope, schedule, and cost into a baseline to assess health of an initiative and across a mixed portfolio to satisfy federal reporting requirements.
• Partner closely with business leaders and supporting resources to ensure financial and operational outcomes are reflected in normal business operations.
• Oversee sustainment processes to confirm that improvements and business benefits are maintained after project completion.

Delivery of Critical Initiatives

• Personally manage the most complex and highest exposure enterprise initiatives, spanning multiple business areas, functions, and workstreams requiring cross-functional coordination and Board-level visbility.
• Drive cross functional escalation, issue resolution, decision making, stakeholder alignment, and execution accountability across the enterprise.
• Remove obstacles, manage dependencies, and accelerate progress on initiatives with significant strategic or financial impact.

Processes, Tools, and Capability Building

• Own the enterprise portfolio management processes, templates, methodologies, and supporting tools.
• Drive/support adoption of standardized initiative/project management and portfolio governance practices across the organization.
• Identify opportunities to improve visibility, decision-making, and execution effectiveness through technology, analytics, and AI-enabled tools.
• Build organizational capability in portfolio management, governance, and benefit realization practices.
• Partner closely with the Business System Office and the Enterprise Performance and Reporting function to ensure governance, continuous improvement methodology, and performance reporting operate as one system.

Scope, Communication, and Influence

• Partner with senior leaders to translate strategic plans and objectives into a funded, sequenced, and governed portfolio of work.
• Communicate portfolio status, risk, and trade offs with clarity and candor to executive audiences, including P&L owners and the executive leadership team.
• Bridge communication channels between engineering, business, and regulatory leaders.
• Contribute to final decisions on operational matters affecting portfolio outcomes, with a bias toward continuous improvement.
• Operate at a high level of autonomy and take responsibility for the performance and outcomes of the function.

Experience and Education

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10-12+ years of progressive experience leading complex, cross functional projects and programs, including 5 or more years managing a portfolio rather than a single project or program.
• 3 or more years of direct people management experience, including leading experienced project or program managers.
• Demonstrated experience leading structured change initiatives and standing up or materially improving portfolio governance, stage gate processes, or a PMO operating model in a matrixed organization.
• Track record of delivering initiatives with measurable, finance validated financial impact.
• Real continuous improvement exposure: has worked inside a Lean, Six Sigma, or business system environment rather than only reading about it.

Technical and Functional Skills

• Working knowledge of earned value management, including CPI, SPI, and variance analysis, and the judgment to know when to apply it and when a lighter measure serves better.
• Strong command of portfolio and project management disciplines: scope, schedule, budget, resource planning, risk and issue management, dependency management, and change control.
• Financial fluency sufficient to partner credibly with FP&A on business cases, benefit models, run rate versus one time savings, and sustainment validation.
• Familiarity with continuous improvement and strategy deployment methods (Lean, Kaizen, daily management, problem solving process, OKRs, Obeya and visual management) and how they connect to portfolio governance.
• Familiarity with satcom, space networks and/or defense tech strongly preferred.
• Proficiency with project and portfolio management tooling and reporting platforms; fluent using data and AI enabled tools to reduce reporting effort and improve insight.
• PMP, PgMP, or equivalent certification preferred; Lean or Six Sigma certification a plus.

Soft Skills and Leadership Competencies

• Influence without authority. Able to drive commitment and behavior change across business areas and functions where the people doing the work do not report to this role.
• Executive presence. Able to present to and hold the room with C suite and board level audiences, distilling a complex portfolio into a clear recommendation and defending it under questioning.
• Candor with judgment. Willing to report a red project honestly and recommend stopping work that is not delivering, while maintaining trust with the leaders who sponsored it.
• Systems thinking. Sees the connections between strategy, portfolio, operating cadence, and financial results rather than managing projects in isolation.
• Comfort with ambiguity. Can build structure where none exists and make progress before the operating model is fully defined.
• Facilitation and conflict resolution. Runs decision forums and escalation discussions that produce actual decisions, and resolves competing priorities between functional leaders.
• Written communication. Produces concise, decision ready material for senior audiences; disciplined about a single source of truth over competing decks.

• Influence without authority. Able to drive commitment and behavior change across business areas and functions where the people doing the work do not report to this role.
• Executive presence. Able to present to and hold the room with C suite and board level audiences, distilling a complex portfolio into a clear recommendation and defending it under questioning.
• Candor with judgment. Willing to report a red project honestly and recommend stopping work that is not delivering, while maintaining trust with the leaders who sponsored it.
• Systems thinking. Sees the connections between strategy, portfolio, operating cadence, and financial results rather than managing projects in isolation.
• Comfort with ambiguity. Can build structure where none exists and make progress before the operating model is fully defined.
• Facilitation and conflict resolution. Runs decision forums and escalation discussions that produce actual decisions, and resolves competing priorities between functional leaders.
• Written communication. Produces concise, decision ready material for senior audiences; disciplined about a single source of truth over competing decks.

Viasat is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, seeking to create a welcoming and diverse environment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, genetics, age, or veteran status or any other applicable legally protected status or characteristic. If you would like to request an accommodation on the basis of disability for completing this on-line application, please click here.