Associate Director, Service Ops Lead - Corporate, Legal and WREF

Job description

Job Purpose: The Associate Director, Service Ops Lead - Corporate, Legal and WREF is responsible for ensuring the stable, compliant, and reliable operation of core systems and platforms within the Corporate, Legal & Compliance and WREF Digital & Tech domain. The role oversees day-to-day platform operations and ensures that processes are followed, risks are managed, and changes are delivered safely. It maintains the operational performance of multiple platforms (e.g. Legal operations, Contracting, Legal AI products, E-discovery, Compliance, Intellectual Property, Real Estate and facilities management systems, Corporate Security systems and Corporate Communications and Secretariat platforms), ensuring they meet agreed service levels and adhere to security and compliance expectations. Operating at a senior level, the role provides leadership across operational teams, acts as the primary escalation point for platform issues, and partners with Product/Platform Owners, architects, engineering teams, and IT service functions to maintain platform stability and drive continuous improvement. This role operates under GSK's "Performance with Choice" hybrid working approach, typically expecting 2–3 days per week in the office, with the specific pattern agreed between the successful candidate and their manager based on role and team needs. Key Responsibilities: Provide operational leadership across core platforms, ensuring system stability, availability, and adherence to service levels, acting as the primary internal escalation point for product and domain teams on service performance and major incidents. Govern incident, problem, change, configuration, and release processes for domain platforms, ensuring operational compliance with ITSM policies and control frameworks, and defining measurable outcomes for problem management (e.g., RCA closure time, recurrence prevention, defect trend reduction). Define and maintain service readiness and runbook quality standards (e.g. ServiceNow Knowledge), ensuring escalation paths, support tasks, data handling, continuity steps, and deployment impacts are captured and validated before go-live. Create and oversee service plans for new and enhanced products, coordinating with Product Owners, third-party partners, and platform/service teams to define SLAs, performance expectations, and support handover criteria. Monitor platform performance, proactively identifying risks, trends, and recurring issues, and implement improvement actions to strengthen stability and user experience. Coordinate with Platform Owners, engineering teams solution architects, and service teams to ensure changes, integrations, upgrades, and releases are deployed safely and meet operational readiness standards. Lead operational readiness assessments, ensuring documentation, support models, monitoring coverage, and non-functional controls are in place prior to deployment. Own operational dashboards, KPIs, and reporting for the platforms, ensuring performance, risks, and issues are communicated to senior stakeholders. Oversee root cause analysis for major incidents, ensuring sustainable fixes, clear remediation actions, and preventative measures are identified and delivered. Maintain and continuously improve operational documentation, including runbooks, support procedures, configuration inventories, and architectural operational views. Manage relationships with third-party vendors and managed service providers to ensure high-quality operational support and fulfilment of contractual obligations. Required Skills & Qualification: Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Information Technology, or Systems Engineering), or equivalent experience. Industry certifications highly desirable (e.g., ITIL, Agile/Scrum, Service Management, DevOps Foundations) Platform operations, service management, ITSM processes, cloud technologies, and core enterprise system administration. Understanding of system integration, monitoring, and operational control frameworks. 15 to 19 years of experience in platform operations (e.g. Corporate/Back office systems – particularly legal, compliance, communications or corporate secretariat) system administration, service management, or technical delivery roles within complex environments. Significant experience overseeing operational performance for multiple platforms or systems within a complex environment. Demonstrated ability to manage ITSM processes, including incident, problem, change, release, and configuration management. Proven ability to diagnose operational issues, lead root cause analysis, and drive sustainable improvements. Experience coordinating with engineering, architecture, and product teams to ensure operational readiness and safe deployment of changes. Experience producing and maintaining operational artefacts such as runbooks, support procedures, and readiness assessments. Familiarity with operational KPIs, risk indicators, monitoring dashboards, and performance reporting. Experience operating in Agile and/or DevOps environments supporting continuous delivery and operational stability. Preferred Skills: Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, especially in complex operational scenarios. Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to provide clarity during incidents and complex change cycles. Strong understanding of security, compliance, and operational risk controls. Ability to lead cross-functional teams, influence without direct authority, and promote operational discipline. Effective organisational skills, able to balance multiple priorities and manage time-sensitive escalations Skills Cloud Based Services, Escalation Management, Identity Access Management (IAM), IT Service Management (ITSM), Legal Compliance, Major Incident Management, Platform Operations, Services Management Why GSK? Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases – to impact health at scale. People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people. Inclusion at GSK: As an employer committed to Inclusion, we encourage you to reach out if you need any adjustments during the recruitment process. Please contact our Recruitment Team at IN.recruitment-adjustments@gsk.com to discuss your needs. Important notice to Employment businesses/ Agencies GSK does not accept referrals from employment businesses and/or employment agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site. All employment businesses/agencies are required to contact GSK's commercial and general procurement/human resources department to obtain prior written authorization before referring any candidates to GSK. The obtaining of prior written authorization is a condition precedent to any agreement (verbal or written) between the employment business/ agency and GSK. In the absence of such written authorization being obtained any actions undertaken by the employment business/agency shall be deemed to have been performed without the consent or contractual agreement of GSK. GSK shall therefore not be liable for any fees arising from such actions or any fees arising from any referrals by emplo