Business Operations Lead

Business Operations Lead

Location: London, UK

Competitive Salary & Excellent Company Benefits

Closing Date: 26th October 2026

About the role

AstraZeneca is seeking an exceptional Business Operations Lead to shape and lead the operating capabilities that enable performance across the UK Oncology Business Unit.

Key responsibilities

Reporting to the Oncology Business Excellence Director, you will lead a multidisciplinary team spanning Commercial Effectiveness, Data Operations, Digital Transformation, Business Excellence, Business Planning & Process, and Meetings & Events. Together, these teams develop conditions for high performance by making performance drivers visible and actionable. They also strengthen customer engagement, integrate information systems and digital solutions, and build scalable, future-fit working methods across the business.

This is a broad and influential leadership role. You will collaborate with senior leaders from Marketing, Medical, Sales, Diagnostics, Transforming Care, Market Access, and Finance. Together, you will identify focus areas, clarify complex challenges, and translate strategic ambition into practical delivery.

As a core member of the Oncology Business Excellence Leadership Team, you will help shape how the business operates today and how it evolves for the future. You will influence decisions that impact performance, launches, customer engagement, go-to-market effectiveness, organisational capability and business transformation.

This role will suit someone who is energised by breadth, comfortable leading through ambiguity, and driven to enhance business performance through people, process, data and technology.

What you'll do

• Lead the Business Operations function
• Set clear direction across a diverse portfolio of specialist teams.
• Create alignment around the priorities that matter most to business performance.
• Build a high-performing, accountable and inclusive culture.
• Develop leaders and specialists while ensuring their work contributes to a coherent Business Operations strategy.
• Prioritise investment, resources and focus across competing demands.
• Drive business performance
• Partner with senior leadership to interrogate performance, find opportunities and influence business decisions.
• Use insight, customer engagement understanding and commercial judgement to guide business priorities.
• Bring clarity to complex challenges and translate them into actionable plans.
• Connect strategy, data, technology, processes and organisational capability to improve outcomes.
• Support the business to maximise in-line performance, prepare for launches and sustain long-term growth.
• Lead transformation and future capability
• Shape the evolution of the OBU operating model and go-to-market approach.
• Sponsor and integrate transformation across commercial effectiveness, business excellence, data and digital capabilities.
• Drive adoption of future-fit ways of working that are scalable, sustainable and measurable.
• Maintain momentum across multiple large-scale initiatives, ensuring delivery and impact.
• Partner with Global and EUCAN teams to employ established strategies and accelerate local execution.
• Oversee critical Business Operations capabilities
• Provide leadership and direction across Commercial Effectiveness, Data Operations, Digital Transformation, Business Excellence, Business Planning, and Meetings & Events.
• Retain overall accountability for critical operational capabilities including business planning, customer engagement enablement, segmentation and targeting, incentive operations, launch readiness and Key Account Management evolution.
• Ensure clear ownership, effective governance and measurable outcomes across the portfolio.

Essential requirements / Experience Leadership in complexity

• Significant experience leading multidisciplinary teams, major organisational initiatives and broad business-critical portfolios.
• Demonstrated ability to create clarity, alignment and momentum in complex environments.
• Strong judgement and decision-making in situations where information is incomplete or evolving.
• Proven track record to develop people, set high standards and drive accountability.
• Resilience, adaptability and a track record of delivering through change.

Commercial and strategic leadership

• Strong commercial judgement and experience influencing business performance, customer engagement or go-to-market decisions.
• Experience connecting organisational strategy with operational execution.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical business performance, launches, customer engagement and cross-functional working.
• Ability to identify underlying business challenges and determine the right combination of people, process, data and technology to solve them.
• Experience leading business transformation from concept through implementation and adoption.

Senior leadership presence and influence

• Credibility and confidence working with senior leaders across multiple functions.
• Experience in commercial leadership, franchise leadership, business excellence or transformation roles.
• Candidates from Business Excellence or transformation backgrounds should demonstrate substantial commercial decision-making experience and clear accountability for business outcomes
• Executive-level communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to challenge constructively, influence without authority and build alignment around difficult decisions.
• Comfortable moving between strategic conversations and practical delivery detail.
• Strong organisational awareness and stakeholder judgement.
• You will be equally comfortable challenging senior leaders, developing high-performing teams, shaping strategy and ensuring execution follows through.

Desirable experience

• Leadership experience across multiple functions, therapy areas or markets.
• Experience in Oncology, Speciality Care or another complex healthcare environment.
• Experience working within both promotional and non-promotional healthcare functions.
• Experience introducing or scaling data, automation, AI or digital capabilities within a business environment.

Working environment

When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working gives 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 unique and ambitious world.

Who will thrive in this role

What matters most is not your functional background. It is your ability to understand how organisations perform, connect multiple perspectives, lead specialists with credibility and create direction when the answer is not obvious.

If you are motivated by improving performance, building organisational capability and leading meaningful change at scale, we'd encourage you to apply.

Business Area

At AstraZeneca UK, we are committed to delivering against three missions:

• Accelerating the position of the UK as a global centre of excellence in life sciences
• Redefining healthcare through fast and equitable access to the most effective medicines, high quality care
• Delivering sustainable leadership that prioritises healthy people, society and planet

Our head office in Pancras Square offers us the strongest possible platform to transform the lives of patients, as the country's leading biopharmaceutical company. It brings AstraZeneca UK closer to our customers, partners and collaborators in the UK's healthcare environment, as well as develop greater collaboration with the wider AstraZeneca footprint.

At AstraZeneca, we are on a journey to bring life-saving medicines to patients. Our role in contributing to decreasing mortality rates globally is clear. We are shaping the future by spotting scientifically-led commercial opportunities and acting now to operationalise and scale them. Driven by the solutions we bring to the healthcare ecosystem, we make an impact at every step of the patient journey.

Inclusive hiring statement

Our mission is to build an inclusive and equitable environment. We want people to feel they belong at AstraZeneca and Alexion, starting with our recruitment process. We welcome and consider applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of characteristics. We offer reasonable adjustments/accommodations to help all candidates to perform at their best. If you have a need for any adjustments/accommodations, please complete the section in the application form.

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