The Sr. Director Project Services is a key leadership role in our Project Delivery Team, globally. The role encompasses providing senior leadership to projects within AZ, as well as leading a team of Project Directors and Managers, with planned potential to scale. You will deliver a 5-star service to your AstraZeneca colleagues, and foster a Great Place to Work for your team. You will be responsible for hiring and developing the team, the approach, and ensuring service delivery quality. You will also effectively engage and communicate with key senior stakeholders.

Reporting to the Head of Productivity and Project Services, and part of the Project Services Leadership Team, you will need to establish rapport quickly, build a strong network at pace, and be able to act as a liaison between GBS Project Services and the AZ leaders. The ideal candidate will be proactive, have experience of simultaneously supporting projects, and a large team. Understanding the importance of high-quality delivery, and build and motivate a global team.

• Run the Project Management service on an ongoing basis to ensure it meets its objectives against quantitative and qualitative measures.
• Responsible for providing project leadership to one or more internal business projects, relying on technical knowledge and expertise to steer the largest and most complex initiatives from conception to implementation.
• Measure key service metrics, and evolve project management methodologies, tools, templates and processes to reduce costs and improve effectiveness.
• Manage resource allocation to projects, ensuring relevant experience and good cultural fit with business requirements.
• Line manage, coach, support performance and professional growth of Project Directors and Managers. Ensure a collaborative and ‘open door’ culture.
• Contribute to business planning and financial requirements including the long term plan, annual budget, forecasts.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with key senior customers and stakeholders
• Maximise the benefit of the service to AZ, ensuring internal customers are receiving excellent value for money.
• Escalate and mitigate high impact risks and issues as they relate to the service.
• Drive, support, and prioritize broad awareness of the service, benefits, and value across the AZ enterprise through frequent and comprehensive communication.
• In partnership with the Talent Acquisition Team, be responsible for recruiting and hiring a team of talented project delivery professionals.
• Partner with Procurement leadership to properly engage and manage third party suppliers to support the service with additional capacity or specialized skills.
• Partner with the Programme Director to define ways of working and team operating model/management structure to drive optimized productivity.

Essential Skills/Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting/Finance, Business, or Healthcare-related major
• 10+ years proven experience in effectively leading a department of senior, experienced people and in programme / project management for large, complex projects within a distributed workforce
• Management consulting experience
• Experience in building high-performing teams through effective recruitment and professional development
• Demonstration of strong communication and relationship building skills with experience in collaborating and sharing knowledge between teams
• Experience of managing and controlling a department budget
• Significant experience and skill presenting in front of C-suite/executive level clients through written and verbal channels

Desirable Skills/Experience:

• Project Management Certification
• Pharmaceutical or equivalent global & complex organization experience; experience of working within a quality and compliance environment and application of policies, procedures and guidelines