Senior Portfolio Strategy Manager

Introduction

A career in IBM Software means you'll be part of a team that transforms our customers’ challenges into industry-leading solutions. We are an infinitely curious team, always seeking new possibilities, and dedicated to creating the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our network of IBMers. We are a team of deep product experts, ensuring exceptional client experiences, with a focus on delivery, excellence, and obsession over customer outcomes.

This position involves contributing to IBM Automation Pillar offerings, which empower organizations to automate and secure the agentic enterprise across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. Our product portfolio consists of infrastructure (Terraform, Nomad, Consul, Waypoint, Packer), Security (Verify, Guardium, Vault, Boundary, Radar), and Observability (Concert, Turbonomic, Instana). Rather than managing individual product lifecycles, you will orchestrate market intelligence, high-impact partnerships, and growth strategies that elevate our overall market position and accelerate IBM's growth.

Your Role And Responsibilities

Your Role

As part of the Strategic Growth organization, the Portfolio Strategy team operates as the business unit-level strategy function for the IBM Automation Pillar. Our mission is to accelerate the Pillar's path to executing on our business targets by enabling integrated, cross-portfolio decision-making across our three single-threaded-owner-led sub-pillars (Observability, Security, and Infrastructure). As a Senior Portfolio Strategy Manager, you will help the office of the general manager evaluate strategic options, set direction, and translate that strategic intent into measurable outcomes with our product teams. This is a high-visibility, internally focused role where you will ensure the portfolio operates as a single, winning system rather than a set of product silos.

What You’ll Do (responsibilities)

• Strategic Hypothesis Creation and Validation: Define the business unit’s strategic theses by identifying winning bets and crafting the long-term vision. You will validate hypotheses through first- and third-party research and align executives around these choices to drive the overarching cross-portfolio narrative.
• Opportunity and Business Case Evaluation: Allocate resources across initiatives by making explicit, constraint-aware trade-offs on funding, capacity, sequencing, and build-vs-partner decisions.
• Commercial Strategy: Act as a key decision-maker for product strategy to ensure our products have a full end-to-end commercial strategy. You will translate strategic bets into repeatable, revenue-producing motions connecting product capabilities, GTM plays, and partnerships.
• Strategic Alignment & Trade-off Resolution: Surface tradeoffs that cannot be resolved within a single product line. You will recommend portfolio-level decisions when local optimization conflicts with overall Automation Pillar outcomes and revenue targets.
• Cross-Product Initiatives: Champion a platform approach to enable leverage and consistency across teams where value is unlocked only through integration, focusing on ecosystem and "Better Together" opportunities.
• Portfolio Health & Accountability: Ensure the business is "decision ready" by defining success metrics and using rigorous data analysis to diagnose early warning indicators. You will analyze product health and roadmap progress and make actionable recommendations to stakeholders.
• Executive Communication & Partnership: Prepare and deliver high-impact presentations on complex insights and strategic recommendations to senior leadership. You will ensure clear, concise, and compelling communication for executive-level stakeholders to guarantee a shared understanding of product strategy across the organization.
• Among other responsibilities, as required by the business unit.
  
  

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Experience: 7 years of progressive experience in GTM strategy, business planning, or product strategy, with a strong preference for backgrounds in enterprise software and infrastructure / developer tools.
• Technical Domain Expertise: Demonstrated technical strength in shaping platform strategies or managing cross-product ecosystems, particularly within cloud-native, infrastructure, or enterprise automation environments.
• AI & Automation Skills: Experience leveraging AI and modern automation tools to enhance data analysis, streamline product management workflows, or model strategic opportunities.
• Data-Driven Mindset: Proven ability to leverage data to inform strategic decision-making, identify root causes, and build strategic frameworks to solve problems. You can reduce qualitative problems to recommendations backed by data.
• Cross Functional Alignment: Proven ability to lead and influence cross-functional teams without direct authority, alongside a track record of mentoring team members or contributing to a community of practice.
• Effective Leadership & Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a high degree of executive presence to effectively present complex financial insights and influence decisions at the highest levels.
  
  

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Ecosystem & Partnership Strategy: Experience developing and evaluating strategic partnerships, ecosystem opportunities, or build-vs-buy models to accelerate topline growth.
• Execution Oriented: Demonstrated ability to "get things done" and solve problems, driving important projects forward despite challenges like fragmented data or ambiguous outcomes.
• Analytics: Experience with data analysis (Python, e.g.). Familiarity with Business Intelligence (BI) tools.
• Software Economics: Familiarity with software economics, particularly SaaS and hosted platforms.
• Education: A degree in the business-adjacent fields (Finance, Economics, Marketing) or an MBA.