Head of Enabling Units IT - AI First

Cambridge, Macclesfield (UK) Barcelona (Spain) Gaithersburg, Boston, Wilmington (USA)

The Head of Enabling Units IT owns technology strategy, delivery, and the operating model across Finance, HR, Global Business Services (GBS), Legal & Compliance, and Corporate Communications, unifying five historically separate functions under one AI-first leader.

The role is also accountable for the business-as-usual SAP delivery and operations. This is a transformation mandate: the leader is accountable for moving these functions from legacy, headcount-driven delivery to AI-enabled ways of working, including the change management and capability-building needed to make that shift stick.

The role is explicitly value- and outcome-focused every roadmap, business case, and sizing decision, including landscape simplification (consolidating platforms, retiring legacy systems, reducing vendor sprawl), should be traceable to a quantified outcome such as cost, cycle time, risk, or capacity freed for higher-value work. It gives the CFO, CHRO, GBS leadership, General Counsel, and Chief Communications Officer a single accountable technology and transformation partner, with one unified workforce sizing methodology and insource/outsource strategy across all five functions.

Scope: $60B revenue, multi-country enabling-functions technology organization spanning Finance IT, HR IT, GBS technology, and the technology supporting Legal & Compliance and Corporate Communications — combined internal and outsourced workforce, build and run/support

Governance:
Standing member of the CFO and CHRO Leadership Teams; direct partner to GBS leadership, the General Counsel, and the Chief Communications Officer

• Own the workforce sizing methodology determining the blend of internal headcount, outsourced capacity, and AI/automation leverage across all five functions; translate it into a multi-year roadmap and budget presenting sizing, cost, value, and insource/outsource trade-offs to executives.
• Set the AI-first target operating model — where AI agents and automation substitute for, augment, or reshape roles — and lead the change management and capability-building required for genuine adoption.
• Anchor every initiative and sizing decision to a quantified business outcome; lead business case development, commercial modelling, financial forecasting, demand forecasting, and portfolio planning to prioritize investment across the portfolio.

• Lead Finance IT (record-to-report, procure-to-pay, planning, treasury), HR IT (core HCM, talent, and workforce platforms such as Workday, Eightfold, and Saba), the technology underpinning GBS delivery, and the platforms supporting Legal & Compliance (contract lifecycle, e-discovery, GRC) and Corporate Communications (intranet, media monitoring, crisis communications).
• Ensure all five portfolios share a common technology strategy, architecture standards, and vendor governance model, even where the underlying platforms differ.
• Own rationalization of the technology landscape — consolidating platforms, retiring legacy systems, reducing vendor/tool sprawl — judged by the outcome it produces like any other investment decision, and track landscape complexity (application, vendor, integration count) alongside value metrics so simplification is managed as a first-class outcome.

• Sit as a standing member of the CFO and CHRO Leadership Teams, and partner directly with GBS leadership, the General Counsel, and the Chief Communications Officer, representing technology strategy, delivery risk, and investment/value trade-offs for each function.
• Act as the…