Director, Product Delivery and PMO

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our incredible team of employees at Royal Caribbean Group. We are proud to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

We are proud to be the vacation-industry leader with global brands — including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises — the most innovative fleet and private destinations, and the best people. Together, we are dedicated to turning the vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations for our guests.

Royal Caribbean Group’s Royal Caribbean International Brand has an exciting career opportunity for a full-time Director of Product Delivery and Project Management Office on the Product Development Team reporting to the AVP, Product Delivery and Project Management Office.

This position will work onsite in Miami, Florida.

This position is not eligible for work authorization sponsorship.

Position Summary:

The Director, Product Delivery & PMO (based in Miami, Florida) will be accountable for ensuring the on time, on budget, and on scope delivery of large-scale, customer-facing private destination and ship projects. The role will cover a portfolio of projects that range from $200M to $1B in scope, are extremely complex undertakings, and have aggressive timelines. Project complexity is driven by the remote locations of the project sites (South Pacific, Caribbean, Yucatan Peninsula, Mediterranean, etc.) and the need to balance the delivery of unparalleled guest experience with financial targets and timeline considerations.

The role will directly manage a team of 5-15 people and may require covering multiple projects simultaneously, or a single mega-project, depending on project size. The role will also require the indirect management of cross-functional teams and contractors that are dedicated to their projects. The role will report to the AVP, Product Delivery and PMO.

The Director, Product Delivery & PMO must be able to influence peers and executives (VPs to EC) to find compromises where there are competing priorities and must be able to enforce processes that enable us to meet our budget, timeline, and scope objectives. The role also requires exceptional people management capabilities to quickly build and train high-functioning collaborative teams, as new teams may need to be assembled for each project.

This role is critical within the Product Development team as it is the link between a wide range of disciplines (Product, Design, Construction, Land Acquisition, Environmental, Hotel Ops, IT, Security, Supply Chain, and others).

As the holistic manager of delivery, this role has four primary responsibilities:

• Manage Costs: this role will be the Capital Budget manager for the projects they are assigned. They are responsible for collecting forecasts from the appropriate teams to build capital budgets up to $1B in scope. The Director must also validate these capital forecasts vs. top-down estimates based on comparable projects and will need to facilitate conversations with teams to identify tradeoffs or approvals from execs if budget forecasts vary from expectations. Further, this role will be directly responsible for forecasting Capital Labor and Travel expenses – coordinating with Brand leaders to collect necessary information. While projects are in progress, the Director must be able to hold project teams accountable to their budgets by reviewing contracts and invoices to ensure they are covered in the capital forecast and must review periodic spending reports from the Product Development controls team to verify that costs are tracking to forecast.

• Manage interdependencies: the role is responsible for holding the complete view of project interdependencies. These interdependencies must be communicated effectively from a working team level to an executive level so that all parties are aware of implications to any changes outside their core scope. Part of this responsibility includes overseeing the creation of an integrated master timeline for the project that incorporates all aspects of project completion, including but not limited to: financial approvals, design timelines, permitting and regulatory requirements, land acquisition, construction schedules, operation start-up requirements, etc. The role also will require the ability to effectively manage peers and execs in the modification of the integrated master timeline to meet certain project objectives.

• Manage project risks: the role requires the ability to identify and document project risks and the ability to communicate these risks (both verbally and written) in a clear concise manner to working teams and execs. The role requires proactive management of risks to reduce their impact through the facilitation of problem solving sessions, regular meetings of key stakeholders, and other governance processes. A degree of judgement will be required to process which risks need to be raised, when, and to what audience (e.g., working team, team leads, execs, etc.)

• Set and enforce project governance: the role must establish and enforce project standards, department policies, decision frameworks, meeting cadence, and project management artifacts to ensure high execution standards are maintained. Proactive coordination will be required with the other Directors of Product Delivery and PMO within the department to ensure best practices and learnings are shared across projects, and that processes and procedures are uniform across projects. 

The ideal candidate will have a unique combination of strategic expertise, exceptional critical thinking and program planning capacity, and carry a relentless spirt of innovation, efficiency, and effectiveness. Also requires extensive experience building high-performing teams within complex project management environments. The ideal candidate will thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced situations, and excel at concise, actionable communication to guide teams and stakeholders through the successful delivery of business-critical, customer-facing projects.  

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Leads the project management function for a portfolio of complex, customer-facing capital projects ranging from $200M-$1B in scale

• Owns the executive communication (written and verbal) of project updates to senior execs (SVP+)

• Owns the budget management of Private Destination capital projects

• Builds spending forecasts (with input from multi-disciplinary teams)

• Reviews spend curves against forecast and drives tradeoff or approval discussions with working teams and execs if spend deviates from plan

• Reviews and approves project invoice summaries from Product Dev controls team

• Accountable for the forecasting of Capital Labor and Travel for project budgets, and ensures spend stays within budget

• Identifies, tracks, and manages interdependencies across multi-disciplinary project teams

• Oversees the building of an integrated project timeline, working with all teams involved to build a holistic project “critical path” that informs decision making

• Accountable for the establishment of governance, standards, controls, ways of working, and meeting cadences across their projects to ensure best practices and lessons learned are consistently applied across our product development portfolio 

• Clarifies and standardizes leadership accountability for respective team deliverables, holding each leader accountable for delivering against timelines, escalating when needed

• Engages effectively the leadership team to develop collaborative, solution-oriented relationships that help drive the objective to deliver projects on time, on budget and on value (scope). 

• In collaboration with project stakeholders and department execs, manages project risks, and facilitates solutioning with cross-functional leaders

• Provides ad-hoc guidance to project stakeholders to ensure success project delivery  

Qualifications, Knowledge and Skills:

• BS/BA degree in a project management related field or other relevant discipline related to the requirements of this position. MBA and professional certifications (e.g., PMP, Six Sigma, etc.) highly preferred

• 10 or more years of experience in project / program management in related fields with relevant experience and a minimum of 7+ years leading, hiring and managing high caliber professionals across an extensive, multi-layered portfolio

• Will require travel. The extent of travel will depend on the project phase. Travel will range from 20-30% for much of the project, but some project phases will require 50-80% Travel.

• Expert in analysis, forecasting, problem solving and quality improvement in the execution of strategies. Ensures total costs are identified and optimized throughout the entire procurement process

• Outstanding communication (written and verbal), and ability to present confidently to senior executive leadership (EC) and cross-functionals

• Proven experience with building relationships, ability to influence others to change, and is capable of galvanizing others around a compelling vision and purpose.

• Extensive experience in managing high-risk projects, programs, and people with high visibility across multiple projects. 

• Proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

• Complete discretion in the management and dissemination of confidential information. 

• Strong understanding of project / portfolio management methodologies and techniques. 

• Self-motivated and able to work effectively in a fast-paced culture.

• Strong analytical, creative, and critical thinking skills with proven experience with strategic planning and willingness to take ownership of outcomes. 

• Solid understanding of accounting rules for expense and capital activities, along with excellent financial acumen that leads to bottom-line results.

• Ability to lead multiple teams effectively across multiple disciplines and levels of experience. 

• Experience with land/construction development preferred, but not required. 

• Experience with travel/hospitality preferred, but not required. 

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon!

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.