Operations Team Lead

Job Description Summary

Job Description

Accountabilities

1. Segment Leadership & Strategy

·    Define segment priorities, operational objectives, success measures, and improvement themes aligned with the overall Operations strategy.

·    Drive service maturity, standardization, lifecycle governance, and operational excellence across the application segment.

·    Provide segment-level input to portfolio planning, prioritization, capacity planning, lifecycle decisions, and operational investment discussions.

·    Represent the segment in governance, planning, portfolio, and operational review forums, ensuring clear decisions, ownership, and follow-through.

2. Operational Governance

·    Own the overall view of service health, operational performance, risk posture, compliance readiness, and adoption outcomes across the segment.

·    Review operational KPIs, SLA performance, support trends, recurring issues, operational risks, and user adoption insights to guide timely decisions.

·    Sponsor cross-application improvement initiatives, automation opportunities, standardization efforts, and recurring-issue reduction programs.

·    Ensure fit-for-purpose support models, accountability structures, escalation paths, documentation standards, and lifecycle processes are established and sustained across the segment.

·    Ensure material operational insights, dependencies, risks, and improvement opportunities are reflected in application roadmaps and lifecycle plans.

3.Delivery Team Partnership

·    Partner with Delivery Leads so that operational requirements, user adoption needs, supportability, compliance, and transition considerations are built into initiatives from the outset.

·    Govern transition-to-operations activities across the segment, including operational readiness, knowledge transfer, support onboarding, documentation, acceptance criteria, and managed service enablement.

·    Confirm that new or changed capabilities are supportable, operationally ready, and positioned for successful adoption before production deployment.

·    Provide an operational leadership perspective to solution decisions, release planning, rollout approaches, and post-implementation stabilization.

4. Stakeholder Leadership

·    Serve as the primary operational leader for the application segment across business, scientific, delivery, technology, and partner stakeholders.

·    Communicate operational performance, risks, service improvements, adoption trends, dependencies, and strategic priorities with clarity and appropriate escalation.

·    Build trusted stakeholder relationships and maintain alignment between evolving business needs, scientific priorities, and operational capabilities.

·    Facilitate decisions on service priorities, trade-offs, ownership, and remediation where multiple applications or stakeholder groups are affected.

5. People Leadership

·    Lead, coach, and develop Operations Managers across the segment, providing clear direction and enabling effective execution.

·    Establish priorities, performance expectations, decision rights, and consistent operational standards for the team.

·    Build application-domain expertise, service-management capability, stakeholder leadership, and future leadership readiness within the team.

·    Promote a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous learning, proactive risk management, and measurable improvement.

6. Managed Services & Vendor Governance

·    Provide strategic oversight of managed service partners and vendors supporting the segment.

·    Review service quality, delivery effectiveness, operational outcomes, user-support effectiveness, and partner performance against agreed expectations.

·    Ensure clear accountability, priorities, governance routines, escalation mechanisms, and improvement commitments are maintained with partners.

·    Drive continuous improvement in support models, operational processes, automation, knowledge management, and vendor engagement practices.

·    Support effective resource, cost, license, and contract governance in partnership with relevant commercial and procurement stakeholders.

7. Compliance & Risk Management

·    Oversee major operational risks, compliance actions, audit-readiness topics, vulnerability trends, and remediation plans across the segment.

·    Ensure effective governance of operational controls, evidence requirements, security and quality obligations, and remediation commitments.

·    Escalate material risks and control gaps, establish accountable remediation ownership, and monitor progress through closure.

·    Promote risk-based decision making and ensure resilience, business continuity, and recoverability considerations are addressed across the segment.

Experience Requirements

·    Significant experience in application operations, IT service management, product operations, or software delivery within a complex, global business environment.

·    Demonstrated experience leading a portfolio, service segment, or multi-application operational scope with accountability for service outcomes, risks, and stakeholders.

·    Experience leading and developing managers or senior operational professionals, including setting priorities and performance expectations.

·    Strong knowledge of IT service management practices, including incident, problem, change, release, service-level, and continual-improvement management.

·    Experience governing managed services, external vendors, or strategic delivery partners.

·    Working knowledge of security, compliance, audit readiness, vulnerability management, operational resilience, and lifecycle governance.

·    Ability to interpret operational metrics and trends, translate them into decisions, and communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

·    Experience in drug discovery, scientific research, healthcare, or life sciences is preferred.

Education & Qualification Requirements

·    Bachelor's or master's degree in technology, engineering, computer science, life sciences, business, or a related discipline.

·    Typically 10+ years of relevant experience in software delivery, application operations, product operations, or service management, including leadership responsibility in a complex environment.

·    Relevant service management, cloud, security, project, product, or leadership certifications are advantageous.

Skills Desired