Job description

PRIMARY PURPOSE: The IT Agile Program Director operates at the program execution level with ownership of program strategy alignment and execution within the portfolio. This position translates approved strategy into executable plans and ensures delivery progresses predictably across teams while reflecting both portfolio direction and program-level strategic intent. IT Agile Program Directors do not own product content, technical direction, or enterprise strategy. They serve as connective tissue between Product Owners, teams, RTEs, and IT leadership (Portfolio) to ensure alignment, flow health, and outcome clarity. The IT Agile Program Director operates at the Product Strategy Coherence layer, ensuring product decisions across teams remain aligned to program strategy within the portfolio. IT Agile Program Directors focus on maintaining alignment between portfolio direction, program strategy and team-level execution, systemic risk and dependency visibility, and flow health across delivery phases. Coaching Product Owners towards product maturity, ensuring Product Owners’ delivery decisions collectively reflect coherent product strategy across teams. Translating delivery reality into actionable insight to inform product and program-level strategy decisions by senior leadership and the Agile Transformation Office (ATO). ORGANIZATIONAL SUMMARY : The University of South Florida is a top-ranked research university serving approximately 50,000 students from across the globe at campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg and USF Health. In 2025, U.S. News & World Report recognized USF with its highest overall ranking in university history, as a top 50 public university for the seventh consecutive year and as one of the top 15 best values among all public universities in the nation. U.S. News also ranks the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine in the highest tier, placing it as one of the top 16 medical schools in the nation and inside the top 10 among public universities. USF is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), a group that includes only the top 3% of universities in the U.S. With an all-time high of $750 million in research funding in 2025 and as a top 20 public university for producing U.S. patents, USF uses innovation to transform lives and shape a better future. The university generates an annual economic impact of nearly $10 billion for the state of Florida. USF’s Division I athletics teams compete in the American Conference. Learn more at www.usf.edu . USF is proud to be an innovating partner within the Tampa Bay region, listed by Forbes as the top emerging tech city in the country. USF Information Technology (USF IT) provides technology services and support for the University of South Florida. The IT team, led by the Vice President and CIO, provides the following services: Administrative Services, Client Support, Communication Services, Teaching and Learning, Analytics and Reporting, Mobile and Web Services, Consulting Services, Cybersecurity Service and Research Technologies. For more information, please visit : Information Technology | University of South Florida (usf.edu) ADDITIONAL INFO FOR APPLICANTS: The selected candidate must have current work authorization in the United States. This position is not eligible for Visa Sponsorship. USF offers GREAT BENEFITS to full-time employees!! • Medical Insurance • Dental Insurance • Vision Insurance • Paid Vacation Days • Paid Sick Days • 11 Paid Holidays • Various Retirement Options , including 401K employer match • Tuition Assistance (available for yourself, spouse, partner or dependent) For more information about your total compensation package and other USF benefits, please visit: Work at USF PRIMARY JOB DUTIES: PI Preparation: • Ensure roadmap interpretation and sequencing remain coherent across teams, and aligned to program strategy within the portfolio. • Ensure backlog readiness and health • Communicate material changes and systemic risks to leadership based on defined escalation criteria. • Finalize any outstanding intake tasks or strategy shifts PI Planning: • Ensure team plans are confirmed and aligned with roadmaps and overall strategy. • Surface priority and capacity conflicts that threaten product strategy coherence and drive resolution through facilitation or escalation. • Confirm dependencies across teams • Ensure plans, dependencies, and commitments are accurately reflected in JIRA. Build and Deploy: • Monitors systemic flow health across teams • Attends PO syncs to monitor progress, address risks, and manage escalations. • Reinforces Product Owner accountability for team-level mitigations while addressing cross-team or systemic risks. • Collaborate with RTEs to align plan changes that impact cross-team execution or portfolio strategy coherence. Backlog Review and Prioritization Cycles: • Participate in backlog refinement sessions to validate alignment and product strategy coherence. • Review alignment of work with approved product and program strategy intent. • Surface new initiatives and validate clarity of intended outcomes and strategic alignment. • Track what needs analysis in the next cycle Analysis and Design: • Analysis and Design Execution Plans o Advises early co-creation of requirements o Verifies shared understanding of outcomes and expectations • Ensure design decisions remain coherent with intended outcomes and product strategy. • Assist with identifying dependencies and risks • Validate that client and stakeholder expectations are explicit, shared, and aligned. • Verify initiative status in JIRA (e.g., Analysis, Pending Review) • Reinforces effective stakeholder engagement and shared understanding of definition of done. • Surfaces cross-team or scope-level risks System Health & Continuous Improvement: • Identify reoccurring friction across intake, analysis, and delivery flow. • Partner with the ATO to design and run small time-bound improvement experiments. • Pilot proposed standards, tooling or practices before enterprise rollout. • Enable and encourage sharing of best practices and lessons learned to improve product strategy coherence across Product Owners. MINIMUM EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE Bachelor’s degree Business, Engineering, Computer Science or IT related field and five years of IT or Project Management experience OR nine years of IT or Project Management experience, or a combination of relevant experience and education. Degree Equivalency Clause: Four years of direct experience for a bachelor’s degree. • Senate Bill 1310- The Florida Senate (flsenate.gov) is conditional upon meeting all employment eligibility requirements in the U.S. • SB 1310: Substitution of Work Experience for Postsecondary Education Requirements • A public employer may include a postsecondary degree as a baseline requirement only as an alternative to the number of years of direct experience required, not to exceed: • (a) Two years of direct experience for an associate degree; • (b) Four years of direct experience for a bachelor’s degree; • (c) Six years of direct experience for a master’s degree; • (d) Seven years of direct experience for a professional degree; or • (e) Nine years of direct experience for a doctoral degree • Related work experience may not substitute for any required licensure, certification, or registration required for the position of employment as established by the public employer and indicated in the advertised description of the position of employment. • Minimum Qualifications that require a high school diploma are exempt from SB 1310. KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES Technical Skills • Stakeholder Relationship Management- Systematically analyzing, managing and influencing stakeholder relationships to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes through structured engagement. • Organizational change management-Planning, designing and implementing activities to transition the organization and people to the required future state. • Problem Management -Managing the life-cycle of all problems that have occurred or could occur in delivering a service. • Requirements Definition and Management - Managing requirements through the entire delivery and operational lifecycle. • Governance - Defining and operating frameworks for decision-making, risk management, stakeholder relationships and compliance with organizational and regulatory obligations. Soft Skills IT CORE Competencies: • Growth Mindset: Takes ownership of personal growth and embraces the concept that intelligence and talent can be developed through continuous learning. Willing to take on new challenges, and views failure as an opportunity to grow. • Communication: Comfortable using a broad range of communication styles, and chooses appropriate, effective ways to communicate. Adapts communication style depending on the audience and situation. Listens and asks questions to develop a better understanding. • Collaboration: Collaborates with others in the pursuit of common missions, visions, values and goals. Fosters a sense of community within and across teams, building on mutual respect, trust, and drawing on the strengths of others. • Client Obsession: Client focused when creating solutions or solving problems, believing that everything we do is to earn and keep our clients’ trust. • Ownership: Takes responsibility, accountability and proactively focuses on areas they can directly influence. Understands their role within the team and recognizes that they share the team’s successes and failures. • Outcome Driven: Focuses on desired results, business outcomes, and how to achieve them. Takes appropriate actions to ensure commitments are met and results achieved. Industry Knowledge Preferred: • Experience in HR and or Finance systems. • Experience leading ERP implementation initiatives • Experience implementing and supporting Oracle Fusion Cloud (Financial and HCM) • Experience partnering with Finance, Human Resources, and IT stakeholders to deliver enterprise business transformation initiatives. Industry Knowledge: • Agile and scaled agile delivery frameworks. • ERP implementation and business transformation practices. • Dependency management and flow analysis across teams. • Product Strategy or Roadmapping for ERP systems • Risk identification and escalation in complex delivery environments. • Product and program management practices and tools (e.g., Jira or equivalent). • Organizational change and transformation concepts. • Higher education or large-scale enterprise IT environments The IT Agile Program Director operates at the program execution level with ownership of program strategy alignment and execution within the portfolio. This position translates approved strategy into executable plans and ensures delivery progresses predictably across teams while reflecting both portfolio direction and program-level strategic intent. IT Agile Program Directors do not own product content, technical direction, or enterprise strategy. They serve as connective tissue between Product Owners, teams, RTEs, and IT leadership (Portfolio) to ensure alignment, flow health, and outcome clarity. The IT Agile Program Director operates at the Product Strategy Coherence layer, ensuring product decisions across teams remain aligned to program strategy within the portfolio.

Requirements

Must-haves

USF is proud to be an innovating partner within the Tampa Bay region, listed by Forbes as the top emerging tech city in the country.
The selected candidate must have current work authorization in the United States. This position is not eligible for Visa Sponsorship.
USF offers GREAT BENEFITS to full-time employees!!
Paid Vacation Days
Paid Sick Days
11 Paid Holidays
Tuition Assistance (available for yourself, spouse, partner or dependent)
For more information about your total compensation package and other USF benefits, please visit: Work at USF
Ensure roadmap interpretation and sequencing remain coherent across teams, and aligned to program strategy within the portfolio.
Ensure backlog readiness and health
Communicate material changes and systemic risks to leadership based on defined escalation criteria.
Finalize any outstanding intake tasks or strategy shifts
Ensure team plans are confirmed and aligned with roadmaps and overall strategy.
Surface priority and capacity conflicts that threaten product strategy coherence and drive resolution through facilitation or escalation.
Confirm dependencies across teams
Ensure plans, dependencies, and commitments are accurately reflected in JIRA.
Monitors systemic flow health across teams
Attends PO syncs to monitor progress, address risks, and manage escalations.
Reinforces Product Owner accountability for team-level mitigations while addressing cross-team or systemic risks.
Collaborate with RTEs to align plan changes that impact cross-team execution or portfolio strategy coherence.
Participate in backlog refinement sessions to validate alignment and product strategy coherence.
Review alignment of work with approved product and program strategy intent.
Surface new initiatives and validate clarity of intended outcomes and strategic alignment.
Track what needs analysis in the next cycle

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

agilejira

Platform: oracle-cloud
Effort: medium

Benefits

Benefits detected in the listing.

Dental

Vision

401k