Director, R&D IT Operational Excellence, Change Management & Communication

Director, R&D IT Operational Excellence, Change Management & Communication

Gaitherburg, MD

IT

Hybrid Work- on average 3 days/week from office

The Director, R&D IT Operational Excellence, Change Management & Communication is a senior leadership role responsible for driving governance, operational performance, workforce strategy, financial stewardship, organizational effectiveness, and change adoption across R&D IT.

As a member of the Operational Excellence organization, this role partners with Capability, Portfolio, Finance, HR, Strategy, and Quality leaders to ensure disciplined execution of strategic priorities, effective decision-making, transparent performance management, and alignment to enterprise objectives.

You'll serve as the operational leader for assigned R&D IT capability portfolios, supervising governance, planning, workforce and capacity management, performance reporting, financial oversight, and continuous improvement. The Director connects strategy to execution by establishing scalable, data-driven operating models that improve organizational effectiveness and support AstraZeneca's digital, data, and AI ambitions.

In addition, this role leads enterprise-wide change management, communications, employee engagement, and AI enablement initiatives that accelerate technology adoption, strengthen organizational capability, and enhance the employee experience across R&D IT.

What you'll do

Operational Excellence & Governance

• Lead operational excellence activities across assigned R&D IT capability portfolios, ensuring alignment to organizational objectives and enterprise governance standards.

• Partner with senior leaders to identify and assess operational inefficiencies, prioritize, drive process standardization and optimization, automation, and AI-enabled improvements that increase organizational effectiveness, consistency, scalability, and employee productivity.

• Partner with R&D IT Operations Leads to facilitate process standardization across functional areas, fostering a one-team approach.

• Drive operational rigor through governance reviews, compliance monitoring, risk management, and corrective action planning. Provide regular reporting against targets, broken down by functional area, and partner with stakeholders to course-correct where needed.

• Lead operational cadences including but not limited to conducting business reviews, governance forums, operational reviews, and planning activities, including defining agenda and recapping decisions and meeting minutes.

• Build strong partnerships across Finance, HR, SP&Q, Operational Excellence, Enterprise Functions, and broader R&D organizations.

• Influence stakeholders across a complex, matrix environment to achieve organizational objectives and drive sustainable outcomes.

Performance Management & Executive Reporting

• Own development and maintenance of business, R&D and capability scorecards, frameworks, and executive performance reporting. Provide narrative and speaking-note support for senior stakeholders, including presentation materials for executive-level review and quarterly performance storytelling.

• Establish, review and maintain operational health indicators & dashboards, KPIs, OKRs, and executive reporting mechanisms.

• Translate complex operational, financial, workforce, portfolio, and AI adoption data into concise, actionable insights for senior leadership.

• Establish & leverage existing reporting frameworks that improve organizational visibility, accountability, and decision-making.

• Supports annual and multi-year planning activities including Mid-Term Planning (MTP), Long-Term Planning (LTP), business planning cycles, strategic roadmaps, and investment prioritization.

Workforce Strategy, Capacity & Resource Management

• Support workforce planning activities across assigned portfolios, ensuring workforce capacity aligns with strategic priorities and delivery objectives.

• Supervise organizational headcount governance, including permanent employees and Outside Service Providers (OSPs).

• Track workforce utilization, organizational capacity, AI and digital skill demand trends, and future capability requirements to proactively identify workforce risks and opportunities.

• Lead workforce readiness initiatives focused on AI literacy, digital capability development, and adoption of emerging technologies across R&D IT

• Support long-term sustainability goals, including but not limited to reducing our carbon footprint.

Financial Stewardship & Business Operations

• Support capability leaders and business partners in business case development, investment planning, value realization assessments, and funding prioritization decisions.

• Lead operational oversight of budget performance against plan, financial governance processes, investment tracking, resource-related expenditures, and recommend corrective actions

• Ensure compliance with AstraZeneca financial policies, governance standards, and planning requirements.

Change Management & Communications:

• Develop and implement the Change and Communications Events…