GBS Project Services - Project Director

At AstraZeneca, we pride ourselves on crafting a collaborative culture that champions knowledge-sharing, ambitious thinking and innovation – ultimately providing employees with the opportunity to work across teams, functions and even the globe.

Recognizing the importance of individualized flexibility, our ways of working allow employees to balance personal and work commitments while ensuring we continue to create a strong culture of collaboration and teamwork by engaging face-to-face in our offices 3 days a week. Our offices are purposely designed with collaboration in mind, providing space where teams can come together to strategize, brainstorm and connect on key projects.

AstraZeneca believes in a culture of lifelong learning. To support your professional growth, we offer wide-ranging opportunities for learning and development.

Our position:

Do you want to be part of a high-performing team that can make a real difference at one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies? We are bringing together a team of experienced project managers who go beyond just “managing the plan” and provide project leadership and insights to the business customers.  AstraZeneca is building an internal consulting capability in our Global Business Services (GBS) group focused on delivering high-quality project management capabilities to our enterprise organization. 

Our vision is to build a global, enterprise project services team that delivers business outcomes by responding to the ongoing internal business demand for strong project management skillsets and capabilities across the company.  You will work closely with our businesses as a project expert and trusted advisor. We set the highest quality standards, collaborate, and work hard to support our business partners.

You will work within the GBS Project Services team to define and deliver the service quality, whilst also working with the business as a project thought leader, responding to their demand for project support. With a strong understanding of change management and excellent communication skills, you will work effectively with stakeholders to deliver business outcomes.

About Global Business Services:

In Global Business Services (GBS) we dare to change the way we work – we are brave, resilient and take smart risks with a focus on simplifying the way we work.  Through our global scale and diverse services, we look to drive value through our innovation and expertise.  This requires a team who see no boundaries, can collaborate, challenges the norm, feels empowered, and stays motivated and engaged.

In our role as a global business services group, we are passionate about working smarter, to free up time, free up money, protect value and provide new capabilities to the enterprise – all to push the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing medicines.

In GBS Productivity and Project Services, we support this ambition by being trusted partners for delivery excellence and building long-term capabilities to efficiently drive internal business projects. This is where you could come in. Working in Productivity and Project Services is fast-paced, dynamic and challenging. We are looking for people who want to seize the opportunity to take an exciting step in their personal development journey, leverage their own experience as a thought leader in project management and play a fundamental part of delivering a world-class organisation. 

Typical Accountabilities:

• Project leadership - manage cross-functional, complex projects that often carry high risk and experience some ambiguity in mobilising.  Maintain focus on outcomes and benefits.

• Project governance – define, implement and drive project governance across a complex stakeholder landscape.

• Customer engagement – deliver excellent customer service, effective communication, professionalism and a commitment to exceeding expectations.

• External insight – stay up to date with industry trends, best practices and emerging technologies to bring value to internal customers.

• Coaching and mentoring – provide coaching and mentoring to other team members.

Essential requirements:

• Bachelor’s Degree

• Minimum 10 years of experience in Project Managemen

• Proven track record of managing large projects in a global organization.

• Experience managing projects in a global organization.

• Significant experience and skill presenting in front of C-suite/executive level clients through written and verbal channels

• Demonstration of strong, communication and relationship building skills with experience in collaborating and sharing knowledge between teams

• Experience considering risks, evaluating alternatives, and encouraging input from others to effectively make decisions and plan mitigation tactics

• Comfortable and skilled in operating in a complex operational matrixed organization across diverse, global teams

• Excellent business engagement and business acumen with sensitivity to internal and external political/economic environment

Desirable requirements:

• Project Management Certification

• Change Management Certification

• Management Consulting experience

• Pharmaceutical or equivalent global & complex organization experience; experience of working within a quality and compliance environment and application of policies, procedures and guidelines

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.