Vice President, Program Management Office

Location: Penang, Malaysia

Key responsibilities

PMO strategy and operating model

• Define and deploy PMO governance, planning standards, decision rights, escalation paths, and review cadences for strategic-customer programs.
• Translate Strategic Customer Office priorities into a PMO roadmap for adoption, capability building, and continuous improvement across Product Business Groups.
• Establish explicit interfaces among the PMO, Customer Program Managers, Customer Business Units, Sales, Product Business Groups, and enabling functions.

Portfolio integration and dependency management

• Maintain one integrated view of the strategic-customer portfolio across Product Business Groups, functions, sites, and lifecycle stages.
• Set decision-ready baselines that connect design, qualification, supply readiness, manufacturing ramp, product transfer, and production milestones to customer commitments.
• Surface cross-business dependencies, capacity constraints, resource conflicts, and partner or supplier risks; facilitate prioritization and tradeoff decisions.

Program governance and executive decision support

• Establish and lead weekly Program Operations Reviews and monthly Executive Program Operations Reviews and Steering forums, with defined inputs, decision rights, and outputs.
• Give executives and Customer Program Managers a consolidated, fact-based view of portfolio health, critical paths, decisions, and exposure without masking material risks.
• Frame material issues around evidence, impact, options, recommendations, owners, and decision dates; maintain the decision log and drive closure.
• Connect PMO governance to Customer Operations Reviews, quarterly roadmap reviews, and business reviews without duplicating customer-facing forums.

Risk management, recovery and escalation

• Set risk categories, severity triggers, and no-surprise escalation standards for strategic-customer programs.
• Challenge cross-business risks and recovery plans; require accountable owners, milestones, and verification.
• Resolve cross-organizational issues and escalate tradeoffs to leaders with decision authority.
• Quantify revenue, margin, cash, capital, and customer exposure with Finance and business leaders.
• Verify corrective-action closure, address systemic causes, and strengthen execution through retrospectives.

Standards, systems and continuous improvement

• Standardize integrated plans, scorecards, dependency maps, risk and decision logs, RACI, and executive dashboards.
• Govern one reliable fact base for schedule, capacity, qualification, quality, delivery, economics, and recovery.
• Deploy streamlined, AI-enabled digital workflows that improve productivity, traceability, and decision speed.
• Institutionalize controlled records and lessons learned for reuse across customers, Product Business Groups, and programs.

Organization leadership and partnership

• Build and develop the PMO team and federated community; set standards for methods, coaching, succession, and growth.
• Partner across leadership and Customer Program Managers to foster fact-based accountability across organizational boundaries.
• Timely, decision-ready portfolio visibility and leadership confidence in impartial program reporting.
• Greater fidelity to customer commitments across schedule, capacity, qualification, quality, cost, and margin.
• Earlier mitigation of cross-business risks, with fewer late surprises and avoidable escalations.
• Faster closure of dependencies, resource conflicts, and recovery actions, with verified owners.
• Consistent PMO governance, standards, review cadences, and decision rights across Product Business Groups.
• Improved data quality, action aging, decision cycle time, and milestone performance.
• A strong PMO talent pipeline and a culture of transparent, cross-functional execution.

Success measures

Qualifications

• At least 15 years in enterprise program or portfolio management, operations, or product development in complex B2B technology, with substantial senior leadership responsibility.
• Demonstrated success building or scaling an enterprise PMO across businesses, functions, sites, or geographies.
• Experience governing hardware development, NPI, qualification, ramp, transfer, and production in photonics, optical communications, semiconductors, lasers, or related industries.
• Deep capability in portfolio integration, critical-path planning, dependency management, resource prioritization, risk and recovery, and change leadership.
• Proven ability to lead executive governance that converts complex technical and operational information into timely decisions and action.
• Executive presence and judgment to influence without authority, resolve competing priorities, and hold senior stakeholders accountable.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, including the ability to assess revenue at risk, margin, cash, inventory, capital, and customer impact.
• Experience leading and developing culturally and technically diverse PMO and program-management teams across regions.
• Strong analytical, communication, and stakeholder-management skills, with proficiency in data, dashboards, portfolio systems, and digital tools.
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, business, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience. An advanced degree or program-management certification is advantageous.

Working conditions

• This is an on-site position.
• Occasional off-site meetings or travel are required.
• Flexibility to support global teams and decision forums across multiple time zones.
• Regular interaction with executives, leaders, program teams, and selected external contacts.
• Integrity – Create an Environment of Trust
• Collaboration – Innovate Through the Sharing of Ideas
• Accountability – Own the Process and the Outcome
• Respect – Recognize the Value in Everyone
• Enthusiasm – Find a Sense of Purpose in Work

Culture commitment

Demonstrate Coherent’s ICARE values in all aspects of the role.

About Us

Coherent is a global leader in lasers, engineered materials and networking components. We are a vertically integrated manufacturing company that develops innovative products for diversified applications in the industrial, optical communications, military, life sciences, semiconductor equipment, and consumer markets. Coherent provides a comprehensive career development platform within an environment that challenges employees to perform at their best, while rewarding excellence and hard-work through a competitive compensation program. It's an exciting opportunity to work for a company that offers stability, longevity and growth. Come Join Us!

Note to recruiters and employment agencies: We will not pay for unsolicited resumes from recruiters and employment agencies unless we have a signed agreement and have required assistance, in writing, for a specific opening.


Position overview The Vice President, Program Management Office (VP PMO) leads the internal-facing PMO within the Strategic Customer Office, connecting Product Business Group execution to Coherent’s strategic-customer commitments through one enterprise operating system. The VP PMO leads a central team and federated network, partnering across Product Business Groups, functions, Customer Business Units, Sales, and Customer Program Managers to integrate portfolio plans, dependencies, risks, and decisions. Through impartial portfolio visibility and disciplined decision forums, the role enables earlier intervention, more reliable commitments, and scalable execution while preserving business and functional ownership.