Senior Director, Performance

JLL; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

JLL is seeking a Senior Director, Performance for the Life Sciences Platform. The role builds and owns the performance discipline, ensuring credible, commercially useful outcomes across Life Sciences accounts.

You will define the scorecard architecture, KPI definitions and data quality, leading a community of practice and guiding pursuit-to-delivery transitions. The role emphasizes influence over authority, with responsibility for performance across multiple accounts and a mandate to drive

Qualifications

• Has built or rebuilt a performance/measurement function.
• Credible with account directors, MDs and clients; role has no direct authority.
• Strong understanding of management fee mechanics and margins.
• Comfortable influencing and setting standards rather than headcount.
• Willing to change how work is done rather than maintaining the status quo.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain scorecard architecture, KPI library and data quality standards across Life Sciences accounts.
• Convene the performance community and ensure consistency across accounts.
• Engage with Sales Development and account leadership during pursuit to price and staff the model.
• Carry performance from pursuit through go-live into steady state.
• Maintain cross-account view of performance outcomes and external benchmarks.
• Work with technology pod to reduce admin burden so time focuses on analysis and client conversations.
• Serve as the escalation point for scorecard issues, client concerns, or transition delays.
• Develop the capability bar and career path for performance across the vertical.

Skills

Performance function building

Credible with account leaders

Commercial grounding in fees

Influence without authority

Willing to change processes

Job description

Senior Director, Performance - JLL (Life Sciences Platform)

What this job involves:

Build and own the performance discipline for Life Sciences. From 1 January 2027 every performance role reports into an account, to a PMO Lead or an Account Director. Nobody reports to this role. It is a function builder, not a people manager, and it is accountable for whether performance across the vertical is consistent, credible and commercially useful. The honest description of the job: responsibility for an outcome delivered entirely by people who work for someone else. That only succeeds if the decision rights below are real and are used.

What your day-to-day will look like

• Own the standard: Define and maintain the scorecard architecture, KPI library, data quality expectations and governance cadence used across every Life Sciences account.
• Lead the community of practice: Convene the performance community, run peer review of new scorecards, distribute what works, and keep consistency alive now that the reporting lines sit on the accounts.
• Engage upstream: Work with Sales Development and account leadership during pursuit and solutioning so the performance model is priced and staffed before the contract is signed.
• Own the arc: Carry performance through pursuit, transition, go-live and into steady state, rather than inheriting a regime built by someone else.
• Benchmark: Maintain a cross-account view of performance outcomes, at-risk fee position and what good looks like, and bring external market practice back in.
• Drive automation: Work with the JLLT Technology Pod to remove administrative burden from account performance roles, so their time goes to analysis and client conversation.
• Put out fires: Be the person accounts call when a scorecard is wrong, a client is unhappy or a transition is behind. There is no longer a central team to absorb this.
• Develop people: Own the capability bar and the career path for performance across the vertical, including movement between accounts as portfolios change.

These are the authorities that make the role work. They are not advisory.

• Methodology: Sole owner of scorecard architecture, KPI definitions, calculation standards and evidence requirements across the vertical. Any account deviation requires written approval from this role.
• Hiring: Sits on the interview panel for every performance role in Life Sciences. The account is the hiring manager; this role has a documented say in the decision and owns the capability bar.
• Review input: Provides written input into the annual performance review of every performance role, to the account manager who owns it.
• Coverage: Applies the 25% funding test, determines which accounts qualify for a dedicated resource, and signs off the self-perform handoff standard before an account is released.
• Solutioning: Approves the performance resourcing assumption in every Life Sciences pursuit before it is submitted, so that we stop selling scope we cannot staff.
• Escalation: Direct access to the Managing Directors and the COO on any matter of measurement integrity, with no requirement to route through the account.

Required Qualifications

• Has built or substantially rebuilt a performance or measurement function, not only run one.
• Credible with Account Directors, Managing Directors and clients, because the role has no positional authority over any of them.
• Strong commercial grounding in management fee mechanics, contract structure and margin protection.
• Comfortable operating through influence and standards rather than headcount.
• Willing to change how the work is done rather than administer the current model well.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with Life Sciences, GxP or regulated environments

Location

Remote + Travel (up to 25% or as needed)

Extra

• Two-level mandate: The same mandate that applies to every account role applies to the function as a whole. Client-facing: are we delivering what we sold, consistently, across sixteen accounts? Commercial: are we capturing the value of those contracts, and does the leadership team know its aggregate at-risk fee exposure at any point in the year?
• Integrity and independence: Performance now reports into the accounts whose fee it measures. This role is the counterweight. It holds the methodology centrally, it is the escalation path when an account applies pressure to a result, and it is accountable to the Managing Directors and the COO for the credibility of what Life Sciences reports to its clients. If an account restates a result outside the standard, this role is expected to say so.
• Relationship with technology: The JLLT Technology Pod owns tools, data and access. This role owns the requirement, sets the specification on behalf of the vertical, and holds the pod accountable for output that performance people can actually use. It does not manage technology resources.