Associate Director, Product Management - Outsourced Applications

Job Summary

As the Associate Director – Product Management - Outsourced Applications for CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) and Labs, you will oversee day-to-day support activities to ensure the reliability of our IT products and enhance user productivity across the pharma operations. This role is pivotal in collaborating with product owners, engineers, strategic partners, validation/QA, and business stakeholders to resolve incidents, streamline processes, and implement optimizations. You will also support the delivery of product roadmaps and ensure business continuity through robust application recovery and disaster recovery strategies while maintaining audit readiness.

Responsibilities

• Own service design, service transition, vendor management, and the product lifecycle with clear timelines, regular status updates, and proactive stakeholder communication.
• Deliver the product lifecycle roadmap for R&D Tech CMC and Lab solutions, ensuring alignment with business priorities.
• Coordinate cross-functional incident response and lead resolution or safe workaround implementation involving engineering, ITSM, service desk, QA, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and vendors.
• Maintain and enhance support runbooks, knowledge articles, escalation paths, and on-call rotas for consistent service.
• Operate and mature ITSM processes such as incident, problem, change, release, request, and configuration management; ensure SLAs/OLAs compliance.
• Monitor support metrics and KPIs (MTTR, incident volumes, SLA attainment, CSAT) to identify trends and present actionable insights to stakeholders.
• Lead post-incident reviews (root cause analysis) to implement durable changes and ensure tracking and closure of follow-up actions.
• Support product lifecycle activities including release coordination, validation artifacts review, monitoring, go-live readiness, and decommissioning.
• Collaborate with Product Owners on backlog prioritization considering operational risk, user impact, and regulatory requirements.
• Coach and mentor junior support staff while acting as an escalation point for complex issues.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science, life sciences or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience: 15+ years overall experience, with a minimum of 6 years in product, technical, or application support in pharma or regulated healthcare environments.
• Proven knowledge of pharmaceutical business processes within the R&D Scientific (Early Science) area.
• Experience with supporting laboratory information management systems (LIMS), electronic lab notebooks (ELN), and related scientific platforms.
• Strong ITSM experience and knowledge of incident, problem, change, release, request, and configuration management in regulated environments.
• Proven experience in product lifecycle management, vendor governance, and regulatory compliance.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, SaaS products, and integrations, as well as monitoring and observability tools.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills in English.

Preferred Skills

• Prior experience coaching or leading a support team.
• Certifications such as ITIL v3/v4 (preferred), Agile certifications, and Agile/Scrum exposure.
• Hands-on experience with monitoring, logging, or observability tools.
• Familiarity with regulatory or quality standards in healthcare or life sciences.
• Experience with specific pharma systems (Clinical, Safety, Regulatory domains) is a plus.

Experience

• Minimum of 15+ years overall experience, with at least 6 years in relevant roles within the pharma/life sciences sector.

Environment

• This role is hybrid with a mix of office and remote work arrangements, based in Bangalore, India.

Salary

Salary details are not specified.

Growth Opportunities

• Opportunities for professional development and growth within a global, regulated pharma IT environment, influencing product quality and user experience.

Benefits

Benefits information is not specified.