Director, Enterprise Strategic Initiatives

About us

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.

What you'll do

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 owns the enterprise project portfolio end to end and leads the team of project managers who deliver it. This role establishes the governance standard, stage gates, and single reporting format that give the executive team one honest view of the company's most important initiatives, so funding and attention concentrate on the few that matter and the rest stop cleanly. Beyond governance, the Director personally owns delivery of the most critical, highly cross functional initiatives and partners with FP&A to validate and sustain the financial benefits those initiatives promise.

This 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.

The day-to-day

Portfolio Governance and Standards

• Own portfolio oversight across the enterprise, including the governance standard, stage gate model, and a single consistent reporting format used by all enterprise strategic projects.
• Support development of the criteria that define what qualifies as an enterprise strategic project, and apply those criteria to shape and prune the portfolio.
• Own the portfolio operating model and reporting cadence, including the monthly portfolio review and the artifacts that feed executive and board level forums.
• Serve as the accountable owner for portfolio processes, templates, and tools, and drive their adoption across business areas and corporate functions.

Benefit Realization and Financial Rigor

• Lead benefit tracking in partnership with FP&A, ensuring committed benefits are quantified at approval, tracked through delivery, and validated after close.
• Own sustainment auditing so improvements hold after a project team disbands, and ensure results are visible in operating and financial reviews rather than in a separate narrative.
• Apply earned value and other quantitative performance measures to assess schedule and cost health across the portfolio.

Delivery of Critical Initiatives

• Personally manage the most complex and highest exposure enterprise initiatives, spanning multiple business areas, functions, and workstreams.
• Drive cross functional escalation and decision making, removing bottlenecks that individual project teams cannot clear on their own.
• Integrate what works from live initiatives back into repeatable project management standard work.

Leadership and Team Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of project managers accountable for hands on delivery of the top enterprise strategic projects.
• Select, develop, and evaluate talent to ensure the effective operation of the function; direct people management responsibility is required.
• 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.
• 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.

What you'll need

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 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.
• 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.

What will help you on the job

• 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.

Salary range

$164,500.00 - $260,000.00 / annually. For specific work locations within San Jose, the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, the base pay range for this role is $204,500.00- $306,500.00/ annually

At Viasat, we consider many factors when it comes to compensation, including the scope of the position as well as your background and experience. Base pay may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Additional cash or stock incentives may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position offered. Learn more about Viasat's comprehensive benefit offerings that are focused on your holistic health and wellness at https://careers.viasat.com/benefits.

EEO Statement

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.