Senior Director Application Development & Service Management Operations  

GSK R&D and Digital & Tech’s collective goal is to deliver GSK impact, including the acceleration the discovery and development of medicines and vaccines to patients.  R&D Digital & Tech are the key Tech partner to support the R&D Ambition of bringing more medicines and vaccines to patients and support our scientists by supercharging R&D with Data.

The Quality Engineering and Labs (QEL) team is a pivotal function for this, as it looks after the ~500 systems that support the end-to-end R&D process. Within this are the ~200 systems that support our Clinical, Regulatory, Document Management, RD portfolio/finance and Safety systems.

The Senior Director Application Development & Service Management Operations is a pivotal role as the key partner to the whole of the Development Digital and Tech Organisation and will manage a team focussed on the group’s application portfolio, 24/7 service management capabilities and operational support for their application portfolio. This leader is accountable for the roadmap of a large scale of complex application portfolio that will improve the compliance, quality of operations and embed automation as a primary discipline to ensure our application state is known and optimal. Of specific focus are our critical applications that impact patient safety or GSK’s ability to get our medicines and vaccines to market, and this will require an even deeper expectation on observability, AiOps and automation to ensure their operations are at their optimum. This leader will manage the execution to fulfil to the group’s strategy across all elements of QEL, including the requisite value from operational support to demonstrate to R&D how we are supporting their ambitions.

Key Requirements:

• Owns a portfolio, and all operational 24/7 Service Management activities for ~200 applications that underpin the Clinical, Regulatory and Safety areas within GSK. Including activities to manage and maintain the portfolio and the list of potential application transitions in from the delivery groups and decommissioning of applications reaching the end of their lifecycle. 

• In addition, and of specific focus, are the ~17 R&D Critical applications to ensure they are managed effectively by ensuring best in class Service Management alongside deploying technology in a very specific and targeted manner to ensure these applications are robust.

• As we modernise our operations and R&D D&T, there is a need for delivery of an Automation roadmap and plan to be created, managed, and tracked for their portfolio that aligns with the QEL plan, as per the VMO/PMO team. This would include a good understanding of the applicability of AI for operations, and how an AiOps platform could be leveraged to ensure that issues are identified quickly and preferably fixed before they become issues. 

• Vendor Management with our key strategic partners and application vendors, to maintain and monitor the quality of resources that we have available to us to ensure we have a complete and robust set of resources and capabilities from our partners. 

• Building strong relationships with the Development Product Owner community to be seen as a key partner and point of escalation for all elements of the service they manage. This would include building connections with key R&D stakeholders and supporting the Product teams with discussions with the R&D leaders up to SVP level. 

• Partnering with the Central SMO team, and Quality, GP&T (infrastructure), Risk/compliance functions and CISO teams to understand the changes that they need to make to keep GSK secure and safe, and their application portfolio is compliant. Including applicability of quality management systems, enterprise changes (CISO, Tech Debt, Infrastructure changes) and their associated impact to their portfolio. 

• Cost by application of their portfolio through disciplined financial management of the group to manage the process around applications, Technical Debt and Cloud costs associated with FinOps.

• Monitoring and Reporting around our SLA’s, KPI's, metrics, efficiency, capacity, compliance, and value that we create for R&D.

• Delivery of specific projects to uplift, manage and maintain the portfolio – these may include a number of projects for example, removing identified security vulnerabilities, through to process changes generated by process owners within GSK.

• Take a development first mindset to continuously challenge and support the team to stay educated and relevant in the ever-changing technical environment. 

Why You

Basic Qualifications/Experience:

We are looking for professionals with these required skills to achieve our goals:

• Significant experience in senior technology operational delivery. support and portfolio roles with proven experience leveraging technology resources in a complex financial environment.

• Deep ITIL based Service Management Experience.

• Thorough understanding of Digital & Tech strategies.

• L3/L4 Operational Service Delivery in a regulated global environment.

• Ability to build and manage and develop highly successful teams and knowledge workers.

• Depth in knowledge of agile and agile ways of working to ensure management and governance of this way of working across the division.

• Degree or equivalent - Science, Engineering, Computing, Maths or similar

Preferred Qualifications/Experience:

If you have the following characteristics, it would be a plus:

• Experience in managing global projects and multi-cultural project teams, as well experience in managing virtual teams where members are in multiple countries and time zones.

• Excellent leadership and interpersonal skills and ability to work as part of a team both directly and virtually, including ability to consult widely, bring together diverse views, and facilitate agreement on critical issues.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and organizational skills required to influence relationships at all levels.

• Strong project management leadership & strong conceptual analytical/problem solving skills; sound judgment and depth in knowledge of project and portfolio management tools and applications.

• Thorough understanding of R&D and Digital & Tech strategies – specifically for Clinical, Regulatory and Safety – but also include financial management, project management and document management systems applicable to an R&D environment.

• Track record of delivering insights and recommendations to business leaders

• Proven ability to work independently & strong attention to detail.

• Capacity to manage multiple priorities while thriving fast-paced environment.

• Proven ability to work well under pressure and within tight deadlines.

Interested in Joining the Team?

Please apply via our online portal providing your CV and Cover Letter.

(Please take a personal copy of the Job Description, as this will not be available online post closure of the advert)

Closing Date: COP  30th August 2024

Due to the holiday period, we have an extended closing date on this role; and expect to starting interviewing in September. therefore, there may be a delay in receiving a response/update to your application.

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Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a special purpose – to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together – so we can positively impact the health of billions of people and deliver stronger, more sustainable shareholder returns – as an organisation where people can thrive. We prevent and treat disease with vaccines, specialty and general medicines. We focus on the science of the immune system and the use of new platform and data technologies, investing in four core therapeutic areas (infectious diseases, HIV, respiratory/ immunology and oncology).

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