DevOps & Continuous Improvement Success Lead

AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven biopharmaceutical business with a primary focus on the discovery, development and commercialization of prescription medicines.

Our purpose as a company is to push the boundaries of science to deliver

life-changing medicines and greater efficiency & innovation in healthcare.

As science moves forward, technology needs to keep pace. AstraZeneca has created a world class IT organization by radically reinventing the current IT operating model and organization design; supplier ecosystem optimization and insourcing; establishment of a network of global Technology Centres; significant Infrastructure and Technology transformation; cultural change and risk management.

As an individual contributor within the Commercial IT, Application Engineering Team the Senior Platform Success Engineer responsibilities includes the following:

· Day-to-day operational engagement for Production IT platforms (Veeva CRM, Salesforce, Reltio and Internal IT systems) and related integrations / peripheral systems.

· Building effective relationship, expectation and communications management with Commercial IT, Business, Regions and Markets aligned with a COE domain portfolio.

· End-to-end ownership of ITIL-based production issue management process and execution related to critical business impact.

· Ensure reliability, availability, and performance of our systems and applications.

· Contribute to the success of delivering value to Commercial IT customers by focusing on a positive user experience, troubleshooting issues, and implementing application engineering & operations best practices.

· Work collaboratively with development, operations, and other teams to implement best practices for system reliability and performance.

· Exploring and implementing new ways to automate systems - Designing and testing automation processes, identifying quality issue and supporting IT platform teams to eliminate defects and errors with product and platform development.

Typical Accountabilities

Platform Success Engineer

• Partner with Platform & Product Engineering, Application engineering capability leads to identify and prioritize Continuous Improvement & optimization initiatives.
• Contribute to IT platform & Product health and compliance metric definition, measurement, analyses and reporting.
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for platform features, best practices and troubleshooting guides.
• Partner with service team to generate root cause analysis for production incidents and make sure a well-defined roadmap for Continuous Improvements is generated.
• Maintain a working knowledge of IT Service Management principles and business acumen aligned with platform and product portfolios.
• Work closely with DevOps teams to understand platform/production updates and new features, ensuring they are scalable, reliable, and performant.
• Partners with Platform Engineering Leads & BRMs to plan prioritized business, sourced from production issue analyses, giving to domain delivery backlog(s)
• Ensure business supplied requirements (user stories) are technically implementable by platform teams.
• Partners and adheres to steer from Platform Engineering Lead(s) in implementing partner engagement and communication strategies.
• Give to the platform and Product health and compliance metric definition, measurement, analyses and reporting.
• Maintain platform and product technical and technology SME, proven understanding of ITIL Service Management principles and eye for business aligned with platform and product portfolio.

​Operational Maturity, Improvements, and Innovations

• Identify, design, and drive Continuous Improvement and automation initiatives.
• Collaborate with development teams to advocate for user and critical operations needs and contribute to and help influence platform roadmap discussions.
• Drives Continuous Improvement and facilitates lean improvement scaling across wider portfolio.
• Partners with IT platform team customers to collaboratively evaluate production issues and jointly generate Continuous Improvement opportunities.
• Identifies “self-service” opportunities and formulates cases for Platform Success Lead sponsorship.
• Ensure seamless transition and communication between development and operations.
• Partners with IT stakeholders to collect and analyze user feedback, collaboratively evaluate production issues and jointly identify areas for improvement and feature enhancements.
• Implement and oversee monitoring solutions to ensure the health and availability for IT platforms.
• Proactively identify and address potential issues before they impact operations.
• Identifies metric-driven automation opportunities to drive new AIOps capabilities.
• AIOps roadmap & implementation planning
• Lead, evolve and measure platform success metrics & KPIs within data-driven analyses supporting.
• Provides input into cases, Request for Proposals, supplier selection, and evaluation of proposals.
• P1/P2 incident corrective actions and exposing improvement opportunities.

Platform Success Practice management

• Participates in AIOps and DevOps communities of practice.
• Participates in ITIL Service Management communities of practice.
• Participates in business, technical and analyst communities of practice.

Education, Qualifications, Skills and Experience

Essential

• Degree level education in computer science or similar
• Prior experience in an Information Services/Information
• Technology Project Management with good business acumen
• Proven experience of managing relationships with 3rd party suppliers
• Proven experience in a technical support or success engineering role, preferably in CRM ecosystem
• Experience with multiple different types of software risks.
• Excellent interpersonal and active listening skills ·

Desirable

• Customer engagement experience
• System Observability skills · Knowledge of AWS cloud services & AI/ML modelling is desirable.
• Clear communication skills and Strong attention to detail
• Working knowledge of customer relationship management (CRM) tools · Ability to work well in a team.
• In-depth knowledge of customer relationship management (Salesforce, Veeva CRM) principles

Skills and Capabilities

Essential

• Ability to interpret and communicate technical information into business language.
• Working knowledge of Agile Software Development techniques and Methodologies
• Working knowledge of Continuous Integration and Deployment methods delivered as part of an agile team.
• Proficient in all aspects of Agile and SaFE (can lead, teach, and run)

Desirable

• Good commercial awareness and understanding of the external market. Demonstrate initiative, strong customer orientation, and cross-cultural working.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

*Expectation of working in the office 3 days a week statement
When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we ignite ambitious thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working give us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That’s why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn’t mean we’re not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility. Join us in our outstanding and bold world.

AstraZeneca is an equal opportunity employer. AstraZeneca will consider all qualified applicants for employment without discrimination on grounds of disability, sex or sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity leave status, race or national or ethnic origin, age, religion or belief, gender identity or re-assignment, marital or civil partnership status, protected veteran status (if applicable) or any other characteristic protected by law.*

Date Posted

Closing Date

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.