Director, Automation
About this opportunity
Company Description
About AbbVie
AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com . Follow @abbvie on LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , X and YouTube.
Job Description
The Engineering Automation Leader position has global responsibility for providing reliable, safe, and efficient operations and maintenance of AbbVie’s automated process control systems. The Leader - Automation is responsible for designing and implementing strategic technical programs and initiatives and global processes to assure consistent service delivery and compliance for the Manufacturing and Engineering Services organization for the Company. The L-A is the point of contact within manufacturing for automation topics including data integrity; system risks, mitigations, and standardization; and the leader guiding long term technology decisions and investments in automated process control for the company.
Responsibilities:
Build and lead a virtual Community of Practice team made up of Site Automation leaders and a direct staff of global automation engineers; be the thought leader with experience managing a comprehensive, industry-leading automation program.
Establish the position of Leader - Automation as the internal leader for all technical process control operations globally; provide the technical skills and expertise to guide the company’s automation standards to the next level of reliability, pro-active performance, and compliant practices.
Lead a team of engineering experts in supporting Site Automation Managers and Operations Managers; ensure technical support is provided as required to maintain the standards and performance expectations at all AbbVie Operations manufacturing sites.
Oversee the development and implementation of technical training programs for Automation.
Support Global Sourcing in the area of global and regional contracts for Automation Process Control Systems including DCS, PLC, SCADA, OSI-PI, and other alliance and master service agreements.
Provide audit support to site Automation teams and ensure consistent practices and globally consistent remediation, if applicable, are applied.
Research and implement innovative cost reduction, reliability improvement, and user interface standardization initiatives in driving human error reduction.
Achieve all KPIs (budget, schedule adherence in achieving project milestones meeting user requirements, etc.)
Manage all aspects of AbbVie’s Talent Management process; coach and deliver ongoing performance feedback, set goals that drive outcomes and model AbbVie behaviors and assess performance accordingly. Build a high performing team & culture that demonstrates the AbbVie Way of Working.
Work with virtual / remote teams on a regular basis; able to adapt work schedules to accommodate early and late day conference calls. Travel estimated at 20% of time, including some global travel.
Qualifications
B.S. in Engineering required
Minimum of 15 years of Technical experience; demonstrated expertise and practice in Automation Engineering including successfully running a large global initiative or large capital project.
Minimum of 5 years leading technical teams – regionally or globally preferred.
Experience in leading virtual teams and roll-out of regional or global initiatives
Understanding of pharmaceutical/biotechnology operational best practices and regulatory expectations
Subject matter expertise in distributed control systems, SCADA systems, PLC, instrumentation/controls.
Thorough understanding of data integrity and network security highly desirable.
Strong communication skills.
Additional Information
Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law:
The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future.
We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.
This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs.
Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.
AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.
US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html
US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:
https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Manufacturing & CMC role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 204 comparable Director Manufacturing & CMC roles across 50 biopharma companies.
Salary context
123 of 204 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 204 comparable roles
+ 11 more countries
Seniority mix
204 of 204 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
2 of 204 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
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Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.