Programme Design Governance Lead

About the role

The Enterprise Transformation Programme is a multi year journey focused on transforming the Haleon business by building an organisation that is wired for excellence to deliver our 'Win as One' strategy and drive growth through continuous improvement. The Programme is enabled through SAP S/4HANA, and the Functional Lead plays a critical role in ensuring that the Enterprise Transformation delivery enables the functional ambition and unlocks value at pace.

Key Responsibilities

The Programme Design Governance Lead ensures that business and technical design decisions are coherent, standard led, enterprise safe and decision ready. The role governs the design interlock across the Enterprise Transformation programme Business Design Authority, Technical Design Authority and Enterprise Design Authority, working closely with Business Process Owners, Programme Leads and Technology teams to manage interdependencies and protect end to end enterprise design integrity. They ensure design decisions are traceable, aligned to design principles and protect long term enterprise value.

Design Governance Framework

• Create and own the Design Governance Approach, to ensure it is relevant to the Programme, compliant with overall Haleon governance expectations, and aligned to SAP S/4 principles.
• Embed design governance into the broader Programme Governance Framework, keeping it current across programme phases.
• Review key design deliverables for readiness before Stage Gates, ensuring process, data, integration and technology designs are robust and meet design guardrails.

Orchestrate Design Decision Governance

• Ensure Enterprise Design Authority (EDA) and Programme Business Design Authority (BDA) decisions are final, traceable and auditable, with clear lineage to enterprise objectives and S4 design principles.
• Maintain the Design Decision register, tracking approvals, conditions and follow up actions.
• Act as Secretariat and Quality Keeper for the EDA and BDA, ensuring submissions are properly framed, pre aligned and supported by impacts, implications and clear recommendations.
• Set and enforce clear submission standards, templates and pre read expectations to ensure design forums focus on decisions, not discovery.
• Communicate effectively on outcomes arising from Design Governance and escalations requiring intervention from leadership and/or external governance bodies.
• Ensure escalations are design led and evidence based, not delivery panic driven.

Design Coherence

• Ensure "fit to standard" is the default position and that any deviations (e.g., process exceptions, workarounds) are explicitly justified, enterprise assessed and approved through governance.
• Challenge proposals that create unnecessary business or technical debt or future legacy burden, escalating to the Enterprise Design Authority where enterprise impact exists.
• Review and assure design readiness prior to Stage Gates; confirming that business and technical designs are sufficiently mature and aligned to guardrails.
• Confirm that unresolved design risks or dependencies are explicitly surfaced to governance rather than implicitly accepted.

Design Interlock and Interdependent Programmes

• Establish and actively drive cross programme design working groups to resolve interdependencies before escalation is required.
• Partner with workstreams and adjacent programmes to surface implicit dependencies, clarify definition of done and agree delivery dates.
• Classify interdependencies across dimensions (process, tech, data, security, ops model), ensuring clarity of impact and escalation route.
• Assess whether dependencies create local optimisation risk or enterprise wide consequences requiring escalation beyond programme scope.
• Ensure design decisions taken in adjacent programmes are properly routed through the appropriate design authorities based on scope and enterprise impact.
• Maintain end to end traceability of design dependencies, from identification through decision, conditions and resolution.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders to support alignment, rapid decision making and consistency.
• Educate programme teams on design governance principles, promoting process standardisation, simplification and adoption of the global template.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders, enabling translation of complex design considerations into clear, decision grade trade offs.

Experience and Key Competencies

• Deep mastery of design authority models across programme business & technology design governance and enterprise design governance.
• Demonstrated track record of design governance leadership across complex, multi national transformation programmes.
• Expertise in identifying and classifying design led interdependencies; skilled in identifying implicit dependencies and determining delivery versus design dependencies.
• Expertise in understanding when interdependencies cross threshold from programme to enterprise concern.
• Strong understanding of SAP S/4 design principles including fit to standard, clean core, controlled exception management.
• Able to challenge both business and SI led proposals that introduce unnecessary technical debt or legacy carry over.
• Able to translate complex design choices into clear trade offs and clearly frame decisions in a way that enables Executive confidence.
• Excellent relationship management; operates credibly across a variety of stakeholders including Executives, Functional Leads, Business Process Owners, Architecture, Data, Technology and PMO.
• Ability to influence through authority of judgement and evidence; builds strong collaborative relationships across stakeholders.
• Confident in enforcing escalation discipline even under delivery pressure.

Equal Opportunities

Haleon is committed to mobilising our purpose in a way that represents the diverse consumers and communities who rely on our brands every day. It guides us in creating an inclusive culture, where different backgrounds and views are valued and respected - all in support of understanding and best serving the needs of our consumers and unleashing the full potential of our people. It's important to us that Haleon is a place where all our employees feel they truly belong.

During the application process, we may ask you to share some personal information, which is entirely voluntary. This information ensures we meet certain regulatory and reporting obligations and supports the development, refinement, and execution of our inclusion and belonging programmes that are open to all Haleon employees. The personal information you provide will be kept confidential, used only for legitimate business purposes, and will never be used in making any employment decisions, including hiring decisions.