Career Area:
Technology, Digital and Data
Job Description:
**Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. **
When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.
This is Caterpillar
The Director, Product and Portfolio Management is a senior leader accountable for shaping, governing, and delivering a complex portfolio of Caterpillar machine technology initiatives. This role plays a critical role in early scoping and solutioning, while also owning program and portfolio management to ensure disciplined execution, alignment, and value realization across the machine hardware and software ecosystem.
This leader operates at the intersection of Product Management, Engineering, and Delivery, ensuring that customer problems are clearly understood, solutions are architected with a Platform First mindset (reusable, scalable, and integrated), and delivery is sequenced to maximize enterprise value. The Director builds and leads a high-performing organization of product, program, and project leaders and partners closely with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Finance, and Business stakeholders to deliver integrated platform capabilities at scale.
**What You Will Do: **
1) Portfolio Governance & Value Realization
- Own portfolio intake, prioritization, sequencing, and governance across platform and engineering initiatives.
- Establish and lead portfolio operating rhythms (quarterly planning, monthly portfolio reviews, dependency and risk reviews, roadmap alignment).
- Drive transparency across scope, progress, milestones, risks, dependencies, capacity, and financials.
- Ensure alignment between portfolio priorities and Platform Engineering strategy, balancing innovation, reuse, capacity, and time-to-value.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Finance on investment decisions, trade-offs, and funding alignment.
- Establish and oversee benefits realization practices to ensure delivery outcomes translate into measurable business value and sustained adoption.
2) Technical Product Management Leadership
- Drive scope-related decisions across all phases of initiatives, from intake through delivery.
- Champion Platform First solutions, prioritizing reuse, extensibility, and cross-platform integration.
- Align and manage cross-program dependencies and synergies to reduce duplication and accelerate value.
- Ensure workstreams are led by accountable leaders who clearly articulate project needs, outcomes, and constraints.
- Serve as a senior partner to Product Management to ensure platform and product roadmaps are aligned and mutually reinforcing.
3) Scoping Phase Leadership
- Ensure deep understanding of the customer problem being solved and the intended business outcomes.
- Assess, clarify, refine, and augment product requirements to enable integrated, end-to-end experiences.
- Evaluate cross-product and cross-platform impacts; pivot solutions to maximize functional reuse.
- Conduct complexity assessments to determine the level of solutioning, architectural rigor, and delivery approach required.
- Drive scope alignment with Product Management and Engineering leadership.
- Define the engineering delivery approach appropriate to the scope and complexity.
- Establish and govern project tracking artifacts in Azure DevOps (ADO).
- Ensure solutioning requests are properly captured and managed in ADO.
- Lead early decomposition of Product Management epics into feature-level requirements, wireframes, and initial delivery artifacts.
4) Solutioning Phase Leadership
- Provide Platform First solution options, clearly articulating trade-offs, implications, and reuse opportunities.
- Drive alignment and decisions on the preferred solution approach.
- Ensure delivery of POCs, POTs, and High-Level Architectures (HLAs) as required.
- Partner with Product and Engineering to align on go-to-market sequencing and software release strategies.
- Drive solution alignment with the designated Engineering Champion and Architecture partners.
- Define and validate the engineering delivery approach for execution.
- Develop Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) cost estimates and unconstrained delivery schedules.
- Secure Product Management and stakeholder consensus to proceed into execution.
5) Program & Delivery Operating Model
- Lead the design and continuous improvement of program and project management methodologies for complex, multi-team platform initiatives.
- Define and maintain a clear delivery operating model, including decision rights, governance forums, escalation paths, and RACI.
- Establish enterprise-ready planning, reporting, and tracking frameworks spanning portfolio, program, and project levels.
- Define delivery health metrics for high-risk and high-impact initiatives (schedule confidence, dependency health, scope stability, risk burndown).
- Provide hands-on consultation for execution strategy, including release planning, critical path management, and dependency resolution.
6) Engineering Ways of Working, Standards & Tooling
- Coordinate alignment across Product and Engineering teams to enable predictable, scalable delivery.
- Partner with Engineering leadership to ensure consistent SDLC practices, quality gates, and release management.
- Govern standards for backlog readiness, solution design, integration milestones, and acceptance criteria.
- Lead adoption and governance of delivery and engineering tools (including ADO) to support traceability, capacity management, and dependency visibility.
7) Agile Delivery Enablement & Scale
- Strengthen Agile execution through partnership with Product Owners and Engineering Managers.
- Support Product Ownership maturity, including roadmap clarity, prioritization frameworks, and backlog quality.
- Establish and sustain Agile-at-scale coordination practices such as integrated planning and release alignment.
- Champion delivery metrics focused on predictability, flow, quality, and value realization.
**What You Have (Required Qualifications): **
- Education/Experience: Bachelor’s degree in Technology or Engineering, or a related field and 10+ years of experience leading product, program, portfolio, or delivery functions in large, complex technology organizations
- Program Management: Demonstrated experience in early-stage scoping, solutioning, and technical product leadership
- Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Proven ability to operate at the portfolio level, including intake, prioritization, sequencing, and governance
- Leadership: Strong people leadership experience leading managers and senior individual contributors
- Agile Project Management: Experience delivering complex, multi-team initiatives using Agile or hybrid delivery models
- Effective Communications: Exceptional stakeholder management and executive communication skills
What Will Put You Ahead (Preferred Qualifications):
- Advanced degree (MBA, MS, or equivalent)
- Experience with platform engineering and reusable services
- Familiarity with scaled Agile or enterprise delivery coordination models
- Experience integrating security, privacy, and compliance into solutioning and delivery governance
- Relevant certifications (PgMP, PMP, SAFe, Scrum, Agile Coaching)
Additional Info:
- The primary location for this position is Peoria, IL
- Domestic relocation assistance is available for those who qualify
- Sponsorship is not available
- International and Domestic travel up to 15%
- This position is eligible for stock or other equity grants pursuant to Caterpillar’s long-term incentive plan
**About Caterpillar **
For more than a century, Caterpillar has helped build a better, more sustainable world. With 2025 sales and revenues of $67.6 billion, Caterpillar Inc. is shaping the future as the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. Backed by one of the largest independent global dealer networks and financing services through Cat Financial, the company’s primary business segments: Power & Energy, Construction Industries and Resource Industries are solving customers’ toughest challenges through commercial excellence and advanced technology, driven by a highly skilled, dedicated global team.
Final details:
Please frequently check the email associated with your application, including the junk/spam folder, as this is the primary correspondence method. If you wish to know the status of your application – please use the candidate log-in on our career website as it will reflect any updates to your status.
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Summary Pay Range:
$189,080.00 - $283,630.00
Compensation and benefits offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, job level, market location, job-related knowledge, skills, individual performance and experience. Please note that salary is only one component of total compensation at Caterpillar.
Benefits:
Subject to plan eligibility, terms, and guidelines. This is a summary list of benefits.
- Medical, dental, and vision benefits*
- Paid time off plan (Vacation, Holidays, Volunteer, etc.)*
- 401(k) savings plans*
- Health Savings Account (HSA)*
- Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)*
- Health Lifestyle Programs*
- Employee Assistance Program*
- Voluntary Benefits and Employee Discounts*
- Career Development*
- Incentive bonus*
- Disability benefits
- Life Insurance
- Parental leave
- Adoption benefits
- Tuition Reimbursement
- These benefits also apply to part-time employees
This position requires working onsite five days a week.
Relocation is available for this position.
Visa Sponsorship is not available for this position.
Posting Dates:
May 11, 2026 - May 26, 2026
Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the successful completion of a drug screen.
Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer, Including Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities. Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply.
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