Operational Excellence, Instrumentation R&D Lead

Alcon; Lake Forest (IL); On-site; USD 254,000 - 329,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Travel up to 20%

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Alcon is seeking an Operational Excellence Leader to strengthen organizational health and accelerate product development performance across processes, culture, and governance. The role leads Lean initiatives, builds organizational capability, and enables data-driven decisions in a global Instrumentation R&D setting at our Lake Forest on-site location.

You will establish health frameworks, drive cross-functional improvements, and scale best practices while ensuring regulatory compliance and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a related field or proven professional track record
• Demonstrated transformation leadership across cross‑functional teams
• Strong knowledge of Lean, Six Sigma, structured problem solving, KPI systems, and organizational health measures

Responsibilities

• Establish organizational-health framework and drive improvements with clear ownership and milestones
• Lead Lean and structured problem solving to improve flow and reduce bottlenecks
• Develop and maintain product development excellence framework across lifecycle
• Drive performance visibility via dashboards and operating reviews
• Scale best practices and capability across global organization

Skills

Fluent English

Transformation leadership

Lean Six Sigma

Education

Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent years of directly related experience

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

Data visualization tools

AI/Analytics tools

Job description

At Alcon, we’re passionate about enhancing sight and helping people see brilliantly. With more than 25,000 associates, we innovate fearlessly, champion progress, and act swiftly to impact global eye health. We foster an inclusive culture, recognizing your contributions and offering opportunities to grow your career like never before. Together, we make a difference in the lives of our patients and customers.

The Operational Excellence Leader strengthens organizational health and improves how a global Instrumentation R&D organization operates across three connected dimensions: processes and ways of working, product development performance, and culture. The role creates transparency, enables data driven decisions, simplifies high value processes, builds organizational capability, and leads improvements that increase speed, quality, predictability, and employee effectiveness. This role is on-site in our Lake Forest, CA location and a typical day would include:

Organizational Health, Ways of Working, and Culture Establish an organizational-health framework that provides insight into operating effectiveness, role and decision clarity, collaboration, change readiness, leadership follow-through, and employee enablement. Combine performance data, employee listening, stakeholder feedback, and operating observations to identify systemic barriers affecting execution and organizational effectiveness. Partner with leaders to translate organizational health insights into prioritized interventions with clear ownership, milestones, adoption measures, and expected outcomes. Strengthen ways of working through clear decision rights, effective governance, disciplined escalation, simplified interfaces, and visible accountability. Build a culture in which teams surface problems early, resolve root causes using evidence, share learning, and sustain improvements without reliance on heroic effort.

Process Excellence and Product Development Acceleration Establish and maintain a product development excellence framework covering principles, standard practices, decision criteria, measures, and governance across the development lifecycle. Map end-to-end workflows and identify bottlenecks, rework, delays, avoidable handoffs, duplicative activity, and other sources of friction. Lead Lean and structured problem‑solving initiatives that improve flow, shorten feedback loops, simplify work, and increase reuse without compromising quality, safety, or regulatory requirements. Identify and prioritize Operational Excellence initiatives based on strategic value, product development impact, feasibility, organizational readiness, and measurable benefit. Evaluate automation, analytics, digital tools, modeling, simulation, artificial intelligence, and other technologies that can accelerate learning, increase capacity, improve quality, and strengthen decisions. Pilot improvements, validate results, capture lessons learned, and scale successful practices across the global organization.

Product Development Performance Create an integrated view of development performance, including flow, decision latency, milestone predictability, quality, risk retirement, reuse, and launch readiness. Identify recurring issues across products and platforms, distinguish local execution challenges from systemic constraints, and lead cross‑organizational solutions where shared intervention creates value. Partner with product, technical, quality, operations, and launch‑readiness leaders to improve development outcomes while preserving their respective accountabilities. Ensure improvement priorities are tied to measurable effects on product outcomes, organizational capacity, employee experience, strategic capability, and sustainable value.

Global Best Practices and Capability Building Identify, validate, document, and scale effective practices across engineering disciplines, functions, sites, product teams, and relevant external benchmarks. Translate proven improvements into practical standards, playbooks, templates, toolkits, training, and adoption mechanisms, allowing justified variation based on product, technology, risk, and regulatory needs. Coach leaders and teams in Lean, structured problem solving, change leadership, and continuous‑improvement methods. Build internal capability so leaders and teams can identify, implement, and sustain improvements as part of everyday work.

Performance Management and Value Realization. Establish a balanced performance‑management system covering organizational health, process effectiveness, product development performance, adoption, capabilities, and realized value. Develop dashboards and operating reviews that support fact‑based decisions, visible accountability, timely corrective action, and organizational learning. Define business cases and success measures for improvement initiatives and track delivery from diagnostic through implementation and sustainment. Conduct post‑implementation reviews to verify outcomes, confirm adoption, identify unintended consequences, and capture additional improvement opportunities.

What You’ll Bring To Alcon:

• Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent years of directly related experience (or high school +18 yrs; Assoc.+14 yrs; M.S.+7 yrs; PhD+6 yrs)
• The ability to fluently read, write, understand and communicate in English
• 10 Years of Relevant Experience
• Preferred Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in engineering, science, industrial engineering, operations management, business, or a related discipline required. Advanced degree preferred.
• R&D environment Demonstrated success improving complex product development or engineering organizations.
• Experience in medical devices, healthcare technology, life sciences, or another regulated industry is strongly preferred.
• Transformation leadership Proven record of leading cross‑functional change from diagnosis through implementation, adoption, value realization, and sustainment in a global matrix organization.
• Methods Strong knowledge of Lean, Six Sigma, structured problem solving, process design, change management, KPI systems, organizational‑health measurement, and benefits realization.
• Digital and analytics Experience using data visualization, analytics, automation, AI, or other digital technologies to improve decisions, productivity, quality, or organizational effectiveness.
• Certification Lean Six Sigma certification or equivalent practical expertise preferred. Change‑management or project‑management certification is beneficial.

How You Can Thrive at Alcon

See your career like never before with focused growth and development opportunities. Join Alcon’s mission to provide outstanding, innovative products and solutions to improve sight, improve lives, and grow your career! Alcon provides a robust benefits package including health, life, retirement, flexible time off and much more. Travel - up to 20% Sponsorship - No Relocation - No Alcon Careers See your impact at alcon.com/careers.

Alcon’s Total Rewards programs are designed to align incentives with business objectives, support our values, and deliver long‑term value. Our compensation approach includes a combination of fixed and variable pay, with short‑term and long‑term incentive opportunities for eligible roles. The salary range posted represents the anticipated hiring range for this role. Actual compensation may vary based on factors such as experience, skills, location, and internal equity, and may fall outside the posted range. Pay Range $254,150.00 - $328,900.00 Pay Frequency Annual.

Alcon is an Equal Opportunity Employer and participates in E‑Verify. Alcon takes pride in maintaining a diverse environment and our policies are not to discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Alcon is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or in order to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an email to [e-mail] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.

At Alcon, we are committed to helping people see better. We believe patients should have access to quality eye care regardless of their economic circumstances; however, barriers to good eye health exist for patients in both developed and emerging markets. Alcon develops and manufactures innovative devices to serve the full life cycle of eye care needs. Its surgical group is one of the largest makers of equipment used for cataract removal and laser vision correction. Its consumer products include the well‑known Opti‑Free line of contact lens solutions and related products. Alcon, which was founded in 1945, sells its products in 180 countries worldwide.