This role will lead the R&D Digital Solutions capability out of Hyderabad and coordinate with in-market teams to support the organization by developing (or enhancing) digital tools to enable R&D’s Digital Transformation journey. This role will coordinate with in-market team leads, serving as the primary touchpoint for R&D leadership to provide feedback, collaborate on strategic initiatives, and continuously identify opportunities to drive efficiency and enhance output quality. Further, this role will also work with the larger R&D Digital Data Solutions team to share and incorporate best practices for superior delivery.

Develop the R&D Digital Solutions capability and continuously drive optimization of existing R&D capabilities by leading R&D HBS teams responsible for:

• Digital Solutions: Support global R&D with application development, enhancement, and sustainment of digital products, including but not limited to democratization of R&D data with enterprise-wide PepsiCo systems

Functional Responsibilities

• Delivery Strategy
  • Primary functional expert and senior leader for future transitions, build outs and team expansions
  • Through the best-in-class team develop, deploy, scale, and enhance data engineering tools & solutions to address R&D business questions
  • Collaborate with stakeholders across global R&D to determine additional digital application and data needs and define appropriate solutions
  • Foster and leverage working relationships with other technology teams, like Digital Factory (GBS) and Enterprise IT teams
  • Participate in required GBS governance meetings and provide reports on KPIs and SLAs as needed
  • Ensure all requests are processed, documented, and delivered within defined SLAs
  • Assign the appropriate resources for each project / initiative
  • Train, mentor, and manage GBS teams of Managers, Senior Analysts and Analysts
  • Manage team workload and provide subject matter or market-specific expertise to support in daily execution of (high complexity) activities when necessary
  • Develop action plans and organize career path meetings to drive team motivation and increase retention rates
  • Identify potential areas for process improvements and employee upskilling to make recommendations to R&D GBS Leadership for continuous capability development
  • Extract and track data from pre-defined sources and measure / report on operational improvement
  • Create required reports or score cards for R&D functions
• Process Management
  • Responsible for the definition of the SLA/ OLAs, governance model, reporting of service delivery to stakeholders and defining the picture of success for service delivery
  • Create and evolve communication processes with Business Partners (e.g., project planning, workflow monitoring, quality checks, on-going changes)
  • Partner with Business Partners to develop and finetune internal processes (e.g., work-flow mapping, pain-points, and bottlenecks management)
  • Identify potential areas for process improvements to make recommendations to R&D GBS Leadership, in coordination with HBS Data Admin & Reporting Capability lead when necessary
  • Improve existing processes based on frequent end-user and Business Partner feedback loop

People Responsibilities

• Develop teams, continuous motivation, and increased engagement levels
  • Serve as the HBS employee leader for R&D Digital Solutions (e.g., set hub professional development goals and performance criteria)
  • Support subordinates and peers through mentoring and coaching to ensure continuous growth in functional skills, capabilities, employee motivation, and retention rates
  • Define and monitor performance goals for evaluation of direct subordinates
  • Provide timely feedback on team member performance and provide subject matter or market-specific expertise when necessary
  • Build meaningful developmental / career paths for subordinates
  • Report on best-practices and gold standard work within and across teams and hubs to build consistent levels of excellence
• Capability development
  • Support onboarding for new hires
  • Address any gaps in team competencies (e.g., training and development) in combination with developmental plans for existing workforce and potential external talent search
  • Support grassroot self-development efforts (e.g., highlight access to training, Lunch & Learn sessions, etc.)
  • Enhance internal knowledge and team efficiency through productivity optimization and digitization projects

• Experience working in the CPG industry
• Master’s degree required, Engineering, or Business Management preferred
• 15+ years of prior work experience in a similar or related field
• Familiarity with Agile development methodology and tools
• Expertise in Azure Cloud development
• Deep understanding of application design, development, support, and enhancement lifecycle; manage service levels, metrics, and status reporting
• Working knowledge of Data Architecture and Data Democratization
• Solid analytical and critical thinking skills
• Fluent in English
• Ability to manage time effectively across multiple priorities and projects requiring a high degree of organizational and communication skills to ensure requests are delivered in a timely manner
• Exceptional data organizational and problem-solving skills with attention to detail and accuracy
• Proven global BPO delivery experience, R&D experience, or scientific research experience in a combination with strong operations skills
• Experience working with stakeholders in North America, Europe, LATAM, APAC, or AMESA markets
• Strong leadership and motivational skills with a track record of identifying and championing new processes for improving current ways of working by using enabling technology accelerators
• Collaborative skills and strong interest in working with others; Actively creates and participates in opportunities to co-create solutions across markets; will be willing and able to embrace Responsive Ways of Working

• Prior experience of working in a global shared services environment preferred
• Proven supervisory and workstream management skills working with parallel teams or functional leads in different time zones and locations
• Experience building a high performing and highly engaged team to successfully stand up a GBS R&D capability
• Proven track record of identifying and championing new reporting initiatives and reporting process improvements
• Strong analytical thinking with proven ability to connect data and insight from category consumption, brands drivers, macro & micro trends, and future forces of consumer change and deliver clear outlook scenarios to support R&D Digitization roadmap and Digital 2.0 strategy