Director, Head of Operations, HR Digital

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com.

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual. At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

Johnson & Johnson HR has an ambitious vision of digital-first, employee-centric workforce experiences that are simplified, personalized, and measurable. We are designing end-to-end journeys that use automation, data, and AI to orchestrate seamless experiences in the flow of work, enabling employees, people leaders, and HR teams to focus on the moments that matter most.

The Head of Operations, HR Digital is accountable for the reliable day-to-day operation of the digital platforms and solutions that enable global HR processes. The role will lead operational readiness and execution across the HR technology ecosystem, including Workday, Workday Recruiting, Cornerstone, add-on modules (e.g. Microsoft Power Automate apps) and employee experience portals.

In addition the role is accountable to ensure technology and operational readiness for J&J's annual cyclical operations such as audits, five HR conversations and process integration management with upstream and downstream workflows

The role will partner across HR process owners, product teams, technology partners, service teams, and other stakeholders to deliver a predictable and high-quality employee and manager experience.

The successful candidate will establish strong operational disciplines, anticipate and mitigate business risk, use data to improve service performance, and continuously simplify how HR Digital products are supported and operated.

• →Provide end-to-end leadership and accountability for day-to-day HR Digital systems operations, ensuring availability, reliability, performance, data integrity, and an effective employee and manager experience.
• →Lead operational planning, readiness, execution, and stabilization for annual and cyclical HR processes, including the five annual HR conversations and other high-volume or business-critical HR events.
• →Establish an integrated operating model across Workday, Workday Recruiting, Cornerstone, Microsoft Power Automate intelligent automation solutions, and employee experience portals, including clear ownership, service expectations, controls, escalation paths, and decision rights.
• →Partner with HR process owners, HR Digital product teams, Technology, Global Services and external partners to translate business calendars and process requirements into comprehensive operational readiness plans.
• →Drive proactive monitoring and management of incidents, problems, service requests, defects, integrations, automation failures and production risks, ensuring timely resolution and clear communication to stakeholders.
• →Lead major incident and business-impact management for the HR Digital ecosystem, including executive communication, root-cause analysis, corrective and preventive actions, and tracking through sustainable resolution.
• →Establish and manage meaningful operational health measures and scorecards, including system availability, incident trends, cycle performance, automation reliability, service-level attainment, recurring issues and employee experience indicators.
• →Establish robust release, testing and change readiness practices to ensure product enhancements, configuration changes, integrations, automations and platform releases transition effectively into production operations without compromising critical HR processes.
• →Strengthen operational resilience through documented procedures, dependency management, capacity planning, business continuity, disaster recovery readiness and appropriate controls for business-critical HR services.
• →Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize and automate operations, applying intelligent automation, data and AI responsibly to reduce manual effort, improve service quality and enable earlier identification of operational risks.
• →Build strong partnerships with platform and technology vendors, establishing appropriate operational governance and holding internal and external service providers accountable for agreed outcomes.
• →Build and lead a high-performing HR Digital Operations capability with a culture of ownership, transparency, continuous improvement and customer focus.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Human Resources, Business Administration, or a related discipline required.
• Advanced degree such as an MBA, master's degree in technology or related field is preferred.

• Significant experience leading enterprise business operations, digital product/platform operations, application services, or production operations in a complex global environment.
• Demonstrated experience supporting business-critical enterprise platforms and integrated technology ecosystems, with accountability for service reliability and operational outcomes.
• Experience planning and executing operational readiness for large-scale cyclical business processes, peak-volume events, or enterprise releases, including management of cross-functional dependencies and business risk.
• Strong capabilities in incident, problem, change, release and service management, with demonstrated ability to lead resolution of complex, high-impact production issues.
• Demonstrated ability to operate across business, product and technology organizations, translating business priorities into operational plans and clearly communicating risks, decisions and outcomes to senior stakeholders.
• Strong analytical skills with experience developing and using operational metrics, service-level measures, dashboards and trend analysis to identify risks, drive accountability and improve performance.
• Demonstrated people and organizational leadership, including the ability to lead teams and partners across functions, geographies and organizational boundaries.

• Experience operating Workday and Workday Recruiting in a large-scale global enterprise environment.
• Experience with Cornerstone or comparable enterprise learning and talent platforms.
• Experience managing Microsoft Power Platform/Power Automate, intelligent automation, workflow orchestration, AI-enabled services or comparable automation technologies in production.
• Experience operating employee experience portals or digital employee-facing platforms that integrate services and content across multiple backend systems.
• Knowledge of global HR processes such as performance, talent, learning, recruiting, compensation and other annual people processes.
• Experience applying IT service management practices, including ITIL principles, while adapting them to modern digital product and platform operating models.
• Experience with observability, automation, service analytics, operational controls, security, privacy, compliance and continuous improvement in a regulated enterprise environment.

• Ability to work effectively across global teams and time zones and to provide leadership during critical business-cycle or production events.
• Ability to manage periods of elevated operational activity associated with major technology releases and annual HR cycles.
• Travel may be required based on business needs.
• Relevant certifications such as ITIL, Workday, Microsoft Power Platform, Agile or product/platform management are advantageous but not required.

The Head of Operations, HR Digital will be successful when:

• Critical HR processes execute predictably and with minimal technology-related disruption.
• Annual HR cycles enter production with clear readiness criteria, risks, ownership and contingency plans.
• System and automation issues are detected and resolved earlier, with repeat incidents declining over time.
• Operational health and business risk are visible through consistent, actionable metrics.
• Employees, people leaders and HR teams experience reliable and increasingly seamless digital HR services.
• Product teams spend less time reacting to operational issues and more time improving employee experiences and business outcomes.
• Automation, simplification and root-cause elimination produce measurable improvements in operational efficiency and service quality.