Programme Design Governance Lead in London

Welcome to Haleon. We're a purpose-driven, world-class consumer company putting everyday health in the hands of millions. In just three years since our launch, we've grown, evolved and are now entering an exciting new chapter - one filled with bold ambitions and enormous opportunity.

Our trusted portfolio of brands - including Sensodyne(R), Panadol(R), Advil(R), Voltaren(R), Theraflu(R), Otrivin(R), and Centrum(R) - lead in resilient and growing categories. What sets us apart is our unique blend of deep human understanding and trusted science.

Now it's time to fully realise the full potential of our business and our people. We do this through our Win as One strategy. It puts our purpose - to deliver better everyday health with humanity - at the heart of everything we do. It unites us, inspires us, and challenges us to be better every day, driven by our agile, performance-focused culture.

About the role

The Enterprise Transformation Programme is a multi-year journey focused on transforming the Haleon business building an organisation that is wired for excellence to be able to deliver our 'Win as One' strategy and drive growth through continuous improvement. The programme aims to strengthen the heartbeat of our business enabling us to become more agile, efficient, and innovative and is enabled through SAP S/4HANA. The Functional Lead plays a critical role in turning this ambition a reality by ensuring 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 and Technical Design Authority and the 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 / 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, op 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 tradeoffs.

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 vs. 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 are 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.