Associate Director, Service Ops Lead - Corporate, Legal and WREF

Job Purpose: The Associate Director, Service Ops Lead - Corporate, Legal and WREF is responsible for ensuring the stable, compliant, and reliable operation of core systems and platforms within the Corporate, Legal & Compliance and WREF Digital & Tech domain. The role oversees day-to-day platform operations and ensures that processes are followed, risks are managed, and changes are delivered safely. It maintains the operational performance of multiple platforms (e.g. Legal operations, Contracting, Legal AI products, E-discovery, Compliance, Intellectual Property, Real Estate and facilities management systems, Corporate Security systems and Corporate Communications and Secretariat platforms), ensuring they meet agreed service levels and adhere to security and compliance expectations. Operating at a senior level, the role provides leadership across operational teams, acts as the primary escalation point for platform issues, and partners with Product/Platform Owners, architects, engineering teams, and IT service functions to maintain platform stability and drive continuous improvement. This role operates under GSK's "Performance with Choice" hybrid working approach, typically expecting 2–3 days per week in the office, with the specific pattern agreed between the successful candidate and their manager based on role and team needs. Key Responsibilities: • Provide operational leadership across core platforms, ensuring system stability, availability, and adherence to service levels, acting as the primary internal escalation point for product and domain teams on service performance and major incidents. • Govern incident, problem, change, configuration, and release processes for domain platforms, ensuring operational compliance with ITSM policies and control frameworks, and defining measurable outcomes for problem management (e.g., RCA closure time, recurrence prevention, defect trend reduction). • Define and maintain service readiness and runbook quality standards (e.g. ServiceNow Knowledge), ensuring escalation paths, support tasks, data handling, continuity steps, and deployment impacts are captured and validated before go-live. • Create and oversee service plans for new and enhanced products, coordinating with Product Owners, third-party partners, and platform/service teams to define SLAs, performance expectations, and support handover criteria. • Monitor platform performance, proactively identifying risks, trends, and recurring issues, and implement improvement actions to strengthen stability and user experience. • Coordinate with Platform Owners, engineering teams solution architects, and service teams to ensure changes, integrations, upgrades, and releases are deployed safely and meet operational readiness standards. • Lead operational readiness assessments, ensuring documentation, support models, monitoring coverage, and non-functional controls are in place prior to deployment. • Own operational dashboards, KPIs, and reporting for the platforms, ensuring performance, risks, and issues are communicated to senior stakeholders. • Oversee root cause analysis for major incidents, ensuring sustainable fixes, clear remediation actions, and preventative measures are identified and delivered. • Maintain and continuously improve operational documentation, including runbooks, support procedures, configuration inventories, and architectural operational views. • Manage relationships with third-party vendors and managed service providers to ensure high-quality operational support and fulfilment of contractual obligations. Required Skills & Qualification: • Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Information Technology, or Systems Engineering), or equivalent experience. • Industry certifications