Senior Director, Global People Operations

The Opportunity:

The Senior Director, Global People Operations will evolve and lead the Global People Operations function required for a rapidly scaling global biopharmaceutical company. This leader will translate the company’s growth trajectory into an effective operating model that defines our consistent HR service & delivery approach and creates an effective global Revolutionary experience while balancing regional complexity and nuance.

Given our growth trajectory thus far, we have the opportunity to build People Operations with AI and automation embedded in how we design and deliver services to enable the experience of employees and managers. This is an opportunity to rethink processes from the ground up, using technology to make support easier, more responsive, and more effective while creating more capacity for work that requires human expertise and care. The role will partner with People Technology & HR leaders to build the integrated service model that combines strong operational foundations, intuitive employee support, and thoughtful use of technology.

The role owns global service delivery, employee lifecycle operations and controls, global operating and compliance standards, process excellence and the integration of Global Mobility into the broader service model. It is accountable for the employee administrative lifecycle—including operational onboarding and offboarding, leaves and accommodations administration; employee records, data, and employment documentation; payroll coordination and benefits execution; policy administration; and mobility, immigration, and work-authorization administration. You will establish clear operational accountability and build strong partnerships across COEs, HRBPs, regional HR teams, Legal and other cross-functional teams to align strategy, apply judgment, manage exceptions and mitigate risk.

This is a build-and-run leadership role for a collaborative HR leader capable of building the processes and team needed to support the company’s current and future scale. The successful leader will evolve the operating system while ensuring that today’s operation continues to perform with accuracy, control and care.

Key responsibilities

• Build the global operating model. In close collaboration with HR leaders, COEs, HRBPs, regional teams and cross-functional partners, define the Global People Operations charter, multi-year roadmap, organization design, investment priorities, decision rights and governance required to support approximately 3,000-5,000+ employees and continued geographic expansion, within the overall HR strategy and organization framework.

• Evolve the employee-service model. Evolve the service model to define a Tier 0–3 model: self-service and AI-enabled guidance; a scalable knowledge architecture; centralized People Operations intake and case ownership; specialist resolution; and escalation to HRBPs, ER, COEs and Legal for judgment-heavy matters.

• Own the employee administrative lifecycle. Set accountability, controls and operational service expectations across onboarding, offboarding, transfers, leaves, accommodations administration, benefits execution, payroll coordination, employee data and records, employment documentation, work authorization and termination operations, partnering with the appropriate COEs, HRBPs, regional HR teams, Legal and cross-functional partners.

• Align global standards with local execution. Create effective global design with one policy framework, one process standard and one set of service expectations while enabling regional HR and People Operations teams to execute locally and surface required variations.

• Enable regionalization and new-country readiness. Provide the global People Operations perspective, standards and enablement needed for regional execution across North America, EU, Japan/APAC and other locations; serve as a corporate backstop and support partner for new-country builds, regional capacity constraints and cross-region consistency while ensuring local requirements and feedback inform the global model.

• Sponsor HR service delivery and the HRSD platform. Own the business vision, requirements and adoption outcomes for HR service delivery; ensure the service model, process architecture and knowledge architecture are defined through the lens of user experience and operational effectiveness.

• Drive process excellence and AI-forward operations. Institutionalize the design sequence of eliminating, simplifying and standardizing work as well as introducing self-service, automation and AI. Prioritize use cases that improve capacity, quality, employee experience and decision speed while preserving appropriate human review, privacy, security and accountability.

• Own operational governance and controls. Establish service standards, controls, reconciliations, audit readiness, vendor governance, risk escalation and corrective-action mechanisms across the function.

• Measure demand, quality and leverage. Build a fact base using case volume, first-contact resolution, time to resolution, escalation and rework rates, self-service adoption, automation, transaction quality and employee experience; use the data to prioritize investment and workforce planning.

• Build and lead the team. Hire, develop and align leaders across service delivery, process excellence, core corporate operations, and Global Mobility; create strong functional communities with regional People Operations teams and develop successors as the organization scales.

• Influence across HR and the enterprise. Build trusted partnerships across HR and cross-functional teams; bring clear process, ownership and decision-rights recommendations to HRLT; surface trade-offs; build alignment across peers; and convert decisions into sustained operational changes rather than one-time projects.

Required Skills, Experience and Education:

• Bachelor's degree and 12+ years of progressive experience in people operations, human resources or related functions.

• Proven leadership of global People Operations, HR service delivery or employee-services functions through rapid growth and material organizational change.

• Experience operating at, or building toward, approximately 3,000–5,000+ employees across multiple countries and regions.

• Demonstrated ability to build selected capabilities from the ground up and evolve an effective, global, matrixed operating model while leading complex employee lifecycle operations with clear controls, disciplined escalation, strong documentation, operational accuracy and care for the employee experience.

• Deep knowledge of effective service delivery, case management, process ownership, knowledge management, employee self-service, service metrics and operational controls.

• Strong global/regional collaboration and judgement including the ability to distinguish enterprise standards from legitimate local variation, enable regional leaders, support new-country readiness and create feedback loops that improve the global operating model.

• Deep understanding of global employment operations, compliance requirements, audit readiness, and regulatory obligations across multiple countries and regions; proactively partners with Legal, regional HR leaders, payroll, mobility, and other subject matter experts to stay current on evolving requirements and translate them into scalable operational practices.

• Track record of building and leading teams, developing functional leaders, and driving outcomes through cross-functional partnership, influence, and shared accountability in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment.

• Practical experience redesigning HR service delivery through process simplification, self-service, automation and AI-enabled support, with appropriate attention to privacy, security, data stewardship, human review and accountability.

• Executive presence and influence sufficient to bring complex ownership, process and decision-rights recommendations to HRLT and mobilize peers without relying on direct authority.

Preferred Skills:

• Fluency with Workday-enabled employee lifecycle processes and the partnership model between People Operations and People Technology.

• Experience serving as the business owner, executive sponsor or senior requirements owner for an HR service-delivery platform such as ServiceNow HRSD, Workday Help or a comparable case-management and knowledge-management platform.

• Hands-on experience implementing or improving knowledge architecture, employee self-service content, case-intake taxonomy, service metrics and Tier 0–3 support models in a global or multi-region HR environment.

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