GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited Posted October 19, 2026

Senior Director, People Services + Reward Digital & Tech

UK – London – New Oxford Street, United Kingdom Full time
Information Technology Senior Director
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GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

Senior Director, People Services + Reward Digital & Tec h

Why Us!

At GSK, we unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We are a global biopharma company with a special purpose – to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We’re proud to be leading a healthcare revolution, and we’re looking for people who can help us deliver on our ambition

The Senior Director, People Services + Reward Digital & Tech is accountable for the technology strategy, operational continuity, and transformation roadmap supporting People Services, Reward, Global Mobility, Restructuring, Workday, and associated HR platforms across Global HR. The role ensures the reliable, secure, and compliant delivery of critical people services while leading the evolution of the HR technology landscape to enable GSK's people and business ambitions.

Partnering closely with HR and other Tech functions, the role translates the HR strategy into a technology vision that amplifies the human experience, simplifies how we work, and enables better prediction and decision-making through data, AI, automation, and agentic capabilities. The role is accountable for ensuring that technology investments improve employee and manager experiences, reduce process complexity, increase operational efficiency, and create actionable workforce insights.

As the senior leader for the People Services and Reward technology domain, the role owns the end-to-end portfolio of HR products, platforms, and services, balancing operational excellence with transformation. This includes accountability for the continuity and resilience of HR operations, platform reliability and performance, cybersecurity and data protection, regulatory compliance, vendor strategy, financial stewardship, and risk management.

The role leads Product Managers, Product Owners, and delivery teams to define product strategy, prioritise investments, and deliver measurable business outcomes. A key responsibility is driving the next generation of HR digital capabilities, leveraging AI, automation, agentic technologies, and intelligent workflows to simplify processes, automate work, and enhance workforce decision-making at scale. Through strong product leadership and governance, the role ensures the HR technology ecosystem remains secure, scalable, resilient, and capable of continuously evolving to meet future business needs.

Key Responsibilities

1. Ensure Continuity, Reliability and Security of Global HR Services

Own the end-to-end technology ecosystem supporting People Services, Reward, Global Mobility, Restructuring, Workday, and related HR platforms, ensuring the uninterrupted delivery of critical people services across Global HR.

Accountable for platform reliability, service performance, operational resilience, cybersecurity, data privacy, regulatory compliance, and people-data governance, including security-by-design, GDPR compliance, identity management, access controls, audit readiness, and risk management.

Establish and monitor domain OKRs and service measures, providing regular insight on platform health, stability, adoption, data quality, compliance, employee experience, and business outcomes.

2. Lead the Technology Transformation of People Services and Reward

Define and govern the People Services & Reward technology vision, strategy, and multi-year roadmap, ensuring alignment with HR ambitions across Talent, Reward, People Services, Learning, Workforce Planning, and Global HR Operations.

Lead the modernisation of HR technology, processes, and employee experiences to amplify the human experience, simplify how work gets done, and enable better prediction and decision-making.

Drive adoption of AI, automation, agentic capabilities, intelligent workflows, and digital platforms to remove complexity, automate manual effort, improve service experiences, and increase organisational productivity at scale.

Oversee delivery of strategic HR transformation initiatives and ensure seamless integration across products and platforms to support end-to-end employee and manager journeys.

3. Deliver Value Through Product Leadership and Operational Excellence

Apply product management disciplines across the People Services & Reward technology portfolio, managing products through their full lifecycle from strategy and ideation through delivery, optimisation, and retirement.

Lead prioritisation, investment planning, and business case development using employee experience, simplification, compliance, workforce insight, automation, and business value as key decision criteria.

Direct and develop Product Managers, Product Owners, and delivery teams to translate business needs into secure, scalable, compliant, and user-centred technology solutions aligned to global HR standards.

Drive continuous improvement through data-led decision making, process standardisation, workflow digitisation, and automation, improving operational efficiency and HR capability maturity.

4. Govern Investment, Risk and Strategic Partnerships

Own the People Services & Reward technology budget, ensuring effective investment decisions, cost optimisation, licence management, FinOps discipline, and measurable value realisation.

Define and execute vendor and sourcing strategies across the portfolio, managing strategic partnerships, contract performance, service levels, commercial value, and technology risk.

Balance innovation and transformation with operational stability, ensuring all investments support business priorities, regulatory obligations, security requirements, and sustainable long-term value.

5. Build Organisational Capability for the Future

Develop the capabilities required to support the future HR strategy, identifying gaps and building high-performing teams.

Create an environment that encourages innovation, experimentation, continuous improvement, and the responsible adoption of emerging technologies.

Partner with HR, AI Tech, and Learning teams to build a workforce capable of leveraging AI, automation, data, and digital tools to transform how HR delivers value.

Lead your team in using approved AI tools to improve productivity and ways of working, role-modelling responsible use and follow GSK’s Responsible AI, privacy and security requirements

Why You!

We are seeking professionals with the following required skills and qualifications to help us achieve our goals:

Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Information Technology, or Engineering), or equivalent experience.

Industry certifications highly desirable (e.g., SAFe, Product Leadership, Workday Pro or equivalent HR technology certifications)

Significant experience in HR technology leadership, product management, or functional HR systems roles, including accountability for platform strategy, budget ownership, and product outcomes.

Proven ability to define and deliver multi-year HR Systems strategies and Workday-centric product roadmaps.

Experience directing Product Managers and Product Owners and managing value-based prioritisation across multiple HR platforms (e.g., Workday, People Services, Reward).

Demonstrated ability to develop business cases and lead budget decisions aligned to expected employee experience, compliance, operational efficiency, and people data value.

Experience leading major HR transformation programmes, automation initiatives, or global process digitalisation.

Track record of developing HR technology capability, coaching product teams, and building domain skills in areas such as Workday configuration, HR data, workflow automation, and reporting/insights.

Experience overseeing vendor contributions across HR technology platforms, including Workday AMS suppliers, learning technology vendors, and integration partners.

Experience leading teams internationally

Other Job-Related Skills/Background

Ability to work in a very fast-paced and fluid environment

Comfortable with ambiguity and change

Strong commercial awareness and financial acumen, including understanding of HR system licensing, payroll cost models, and integration run costs.

Excellent communication and stakeholder influence skills, able to translate complex HR technology constraints into business-friendly language.

Strategic mindset with the ability to balance immediate operational needs with long-term HR systems direction and platform sustainability.

Ability to challenge prioritisation decisions to maximise functional and enterprise value.

Understanding of emerging HR technology, Workday roadmap developments, employee experience trends, automation opportunities, and modern delivery practices.

Excellent team building and team leading capabilities

Interested in Joining the Team?

Apply now to join us. Tell us how your experience will help build SCM that accelerates science and improves lives.

(Please take a personal copy of the Job Description, as this will not be available online post closure of the advert)

Closing Date:  31st October 2026

Working Pattern

This role is a hybrid role, with a min of 2/3 days a week onsite at our central London HQ.

#AGTech

#LI-Hybrid

Skills

Agile Methodology, Cross-Functional Teamwork, Data Analysis, Design Thinking, DevOps, Prioritization, Product Development Research, Product Roadmapping, Project Management, Return on Investment (ROI), Software Development, Strategy Deployment, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI) Design

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive.

We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases – to impact health at scale.

People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people.

GSK is an Equal Opportunity Employer. This ensures that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), military service or any basis prohibited under federal, state or local law.

We believe in an agile working culture for all our roles. If flexibility is important to you, we encourage you to explore with our hiring team what the opportunities are.

Should you require any adjustments to our process to assist you in demonstrating your strengths and capabilities contact us at UKRecruitment.Adjustments@gsk.com where you can also request a call.

Please note should your enquiry not relate to adjustments, we will not be able to support you through these channels. However, we have created a Recruitment FAQ guide. Click the Link where you will find answers to multiple questions we receive

Important notice to Employment businesses/ Agencies

GSK does not accept referrals from employment businesses and/or employment agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site. All employment businesses/agencies are required to contact GSK's commercial and general procurement/human resources department to obtain prior written authorization before referring any candidates to GSK. The obtaining of prior written authorization is a condition precedent to any agreement (verbal or written) between the employment business/ agency and GSK. In the absence of such written authorization being obtained any actions undertaken by the employment business/agency shall be deemed to have been performed without the consent or contractual agreement of GSK. GSK shall therefore not be liable for any fees arising from such actions or any fees arising from any referrals by employment businesses/agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site.

Please note that if you are a US Licensed Healthcare Professional or Healthcare Professional as defined by the laws of the state issuing your license, GSK may be required to capture and report expenses GSK incurs, on your behalf, in the event you are afforded an interview for employment. This capture of applicable transfers of value is necessary to ensure GSK’s compliance to all federal and state US Transparency requirements. For more information, please visit the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website at https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/

Job details

Seniority
Senior Director
Function
Information Technology
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
UK – London – New Oxford Street, United Kingdom
Employment type
Full time

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Information Technology role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 95 comparable Senior Director Information Technology roles across 23 biopharma companies.

95Comparable roles tracked
84Currently active
23Companies hiring similar roles
9Countries represented

Salary context

44 of 95 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.

This roleSubject Not listed on this posting
Peer group range $153,000 – $400,000 (median $253,474)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 95 comparable roles

United States65
United Kingdom12
India11
Germany2
Japan1
Czech Republic1

+ 3 more countries

Seniority mix

95 of 95 peers have a known seniority level

Director67
Senior Director21
Executive/VP7

Therapeutic area mix

2 of 95 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Oncology2

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.

60%similar
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50%similar
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50%similar
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GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited UK – London – New Oxford Street, United Kingdom Director
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50%similar
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Notify me about similar jobs

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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.

60%
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Gilead Sciences Europe Ltd. · London, United Kingdom · Senior Director
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
50%
Product Director, Evidence Preparation
GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited · UK – London – New Oxford Street, United Kingdom · Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
50%
Director Reward Digital & Tech
GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited · UK – London – New Oxford Street, United Kingdom · Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
50%
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GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited · UK – London – New Oxford Street, United Kingdom · Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 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.