Associate Director, Operational Resilience

October 1, 2026 3 Mins Read

Location: UK, Cambridge
Company: AstraZeneca, Oncology R and D

You will lead a modern, integrated approach to business continuity and crisis management across the Oncology R and D function that blends regulatory rigour with innovation, including the practical use of artificial intelligence in resilience and risk practice. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with senior leaders, you will set the agenda, test it under pressure, and translate insights into decisive action across sites, functions, and therapy areas.

Job role:

• Operational resilience leadership: serve as the subject matter expert and technical authority for operational resilience, owning business continuity and crisis management as an integrated discipline and acting as the primary point of contact for resilience and risk queries.
• Strategy and alignment: set and lead the operational resilience strategy in close collaboration with enterprise business continuity and crisis management leadership and counterpart functions, ensuring initiatives align to enterprise goals and the global resilience agenda.
• Emerging risk and AI integration: develop and maintain a forward-looking emerging-risk assessment; provide expert review and guidance on mitigation plans; lead the integration of artificial intelligence into resilience and risk management, advising cross-functional teams on how AI can enhance risk management and exercising.
• Audit and assurance interface: act as the key resilience and risk interface for strategic audits and assurance activity, leading the preparation and delivery of business continuity and risk management audit requirements.
• Supply chain resilience: provide strategic oversight of supply chain resilience, leading assessments of nth-tier supplier visibility to strengthen long-term operational resilience and protect critical dependencies.
• Crisis readiness and exercising: design and lead advanced, high-visibility crisis management exercises for site and executive crisis management teams; orchestrate complex scenarios that build confidence and expose improvement opportunities.
• Framework governance: own and govern the business continuity and crisis management framework – plans, business impact analyses (BIAs), risk registers, tools, and the exercise/validation programme – driving continuous improvement and ensuring critical activities, dependencies, and vulnerabilities are understood and protected.
• Training and capability: lead the delivery of the exercise and training programme; ensure colleagues with critical roles understand their responsibilities, are appropriately trained, and conduct after-action reviews to capture learning and improve plans.
• Executive reporting and escalation: develop executive-level reporting and insight from resilience and risk analysis, identifying major threats and opportunities and ensuring key risks are escalated and linked to enterprise-level active risks.
• Standards and regulatory compliance: ensure business continuity, crisis management, and risk management remain compliant with AstraZeneca Global Standards and Procedures and external regulatory requirements (e.g., NIS2 or comparable resilience regulation).
• Enterprise collaboration: operate in close collaboration with internal partners across safety, operations, enabling functions, enterprise risk, procurement/supply chain, and internal audit, as well as external auditors and industry groups, to embed best practice and raise the bar for resilience.