Strategic Process Excellence & Performance Lead

premierresearch; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Premier Research in the United Kingdom is seeking an Associate Director, Process Excellence and Performance Lead to join our Business Operations team. You will drive SO&E standardization, KPI development, and change governance to improve delivery and outcomes.

You will shape onboarding, capability models, and cross-functional collaboration with QA and business units to ensure compliant, reliable performance and meaningful insights.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in process excellence/SO&E methods, capability development, or organizational change.
• Experience operating within a clinical research or CRO environment.
• Strong analytical, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills with the ability to translate insights into action.

Responsibilities

• Leads design and evolution of SO&E methodologies, templates, and toolsets with standardization and flexibility.
• Drives continuous improvement, root-cause analyses, piloting solutions, and scaling improvements to reduce variation and cycle time.
• Oversees onboarding pathways and capability models for PAs/Sr PAs/PSs/Sr PSs; partners with Business Units for onboarding.
• Establishes professional standards, competency frameworks, mentoring structures, and communities of practice.
• Advances organizational change maturity through governance, adoption metrics, and leadership enablement.
• Ensures alignment between training content, practices, and SO&E standards for sustained behavior change.
• Develops and governs KPI frameworks, including portfolio health metrics and delivery indicators.
• Partners with Quality and BU stakeholders to integrate risk management and audit readiness into SO&E practices.
• Provides coaching on process excellence, performance management, and change methodologies.
• Balances delivery predictability with capability development and operations initiatives.
• Travel up to 5% as required.

Skills

Process Excellence

SO&E methods

Change Management

Stakeholder Engagement

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Premier Research in the United Kingdom is seeking an Associate Director, Process Excellence and Performance Lead to join our Business Operations team. You will drive SO&E standardization, KPI development, and change governance to improve delivery and outcomes.

You will shape onboarding, capability models, and cross-functional collaboration with QA and business units to ensure compliant, reliable performance and meaningful insights.