Senior Director, Planning and Resourcing - UK or IRE
ICON plc is a world-leading healthcare intelligence and clinical research organization. We’re proud to foster an inclusive environment driving innovation and excellence, and we welcome you to join us on our mission to shape the future of clinical development.
As Senior Director, Planning & Resource Management at ICON, you will lead the function that plans, forecasts and deploys clinical delivery talent across our global portfolio. Reporting to the EVP, Business Operations, you will own the balance between resource demand and capacity for thousands of professionals spanning Project Management (PM), Clinical Trial Management (CTM), Clinical Research Associates (CRA), Clinical Trial Assistants (CTA), Study Start-Up, Data Management, Biostatistics, Pharmacovigilance, Medical Affairs and other clinical delivery groups.
You will inherit an established, high-performing team that runs the resourcing process well. Your mandate is leadership and commercial judgement rather than rebuild: bringing rigour, foresight and the credibility to challenge business partners on whether their stated resource needs are justified by real pipeline growth or contraction — protecting both delivery quality and margin as the business scales up and down.
The core of this role is portfolio-level resource demand and capacity planning at scale. While clinical research experience is an advantage, we actively welcome leaders who have built this capability in adjacent, project-based industries — management consulting and professional services (Resource Management Offices), IT services and systems integrators, engineering and infrastructure consultancies, and financial services transformation / PMO — provided the resourcing discipline was applied to a large, specialist global workforce.
What you will do
You will direct portfolio-level resource planning and deployment, ensuring the right people are on the right studies at the right time, at the right cost. Key responsibilities include:
- Portfolio resource strategy — owning demand forecasting and capacity planning across the global clinical delivery portfolio, translating pipeline, bookings and study stage into resource requirements for multiple clinical delivery groups.
- Challenging demand — constructively challenging business partners and functional leaders on their resource demand, using data to distinguish genuine need from over- or under-calling, and defending decisions in commercial, margin and delivery-risk terms.
- Capacity & utilisation — optimising utilisation, bench and ramp-up/ramp-down across thousands of resources, balancing efficiency against delivery risk, quality and employee wellbeing.
- Leading the team — leading, developing and retaining an established resource management team, adding value without disrupting what already works well.
- Cross-functional partnership — partnering with Finance, Project Management, Clinical Operations, Talent Acquisition and Sales/Proposals to align resource supply with revenue forecasts, hiring plans and new business.
- Systems & governance — advancing the forecasting models, tools, metrics and governance that underpin resourcing decisions, and reporting capacity health and risk to senior leadership.
- Compliance & quality — ensuring resourcing practices comply with ICH-GCP, applicable regulations and internal quality standards.
- Strategic leadership — providing strategic guidance to support ICON's growth and operational excellence while managing resourcing risks and trade-offs.
Your Profile
You are a commercially credible resourcing leader who has run demand-versus-capacity planning at scale in a project-based, professional-services environment, and who is comfortable holding the line with senior business partners. Required qualifications and experience:
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline; advanced degree preferred.
- Resourcing at scale — Proven experience leading a resource management, resource planning, workforce planning or deployment function that resourced thousands of specialist professionals across a portfolio of concurrent projects.
- Industry background — gained in a project-based, billable/utilisation-driven environment. Contract Research Organisation (CRO) or clinical operations experience is strongly preferred; equally welcome is equivalent experience from a management consultancy or professional-services Resource Management Office (RMO), an IT services / systems integrator, an engineering or infrastructure consultancy, or a financial services transformation / PMO function.
- Forecasting & capacity planning — demonstrated ability to build demand forecasts and capacity models against a project pipeline, and to manage utilisation, bench and ramp-up/ramp-down across a large, distributed workforce.
- Commercial influence — a track record of constructively challenging senior stakeholders on resource demand and defending those positions with data and commercial reasoning.
- People leadership — experience leading and retaining high-performing teams, including inheriting capable teams and elevating them without unnecessary disruption.
- Regulated environment — understanding of operating in a regulated, quality-driven environment; familiarity with ICH-GCP and clinical delivery roles (PM, CTM, CRA, CTA, Data Management, Study Start-Up) is an advantage, and the ability to learn the domain quickly is essential.
- Stakeholder skills — excellent communication, organisational and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build effective relationships with stakeholders at all levels, up to and including executive leadership.
What ICON can offer you:
Our success depends on the quality of our people. That’s why we’ve made it a priority to build a diverse culture that rewards high performance and nurtures talent.
In addition to your competitive salary, ICON offers a range of additional benefits. Our benefits are designed to be competitive within each country and are focused on well-being and work life balance opportunities for you and your family.
Our benefits examples include:
- Various annual leave entitlements
- A range of health insurance offerings to suit you and your family’s needs.
- Competitive retirement planning offerings to maximize savings and plan with confidence for the years ahead.
- Global Employee Assistance Programme, LifeWorks, offering 24-hour access to a global network of over 80,000 independent specialized professionals who are there to support you and your family’s well-being.
- Life assurance
- Flexible country-specific optional benefits, including childcare vouchers, bike purchase schemes, discounted gym memberships, subsidized travel passes, health assessments, among others.
Visit our careers site to read more about the benefits ICON offers.
At ICON, inclusion & belonging are fundamental to our culture and values. We’re dedicated to providing an inclusive and accessible environment for all candidates. ICON is committed to providing a workplace free of discrimination and harassment. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.
If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or in order to perform the essential functions of a position, please let us know or submit a request here
Interested in the role, but unsure if you meet all of the requirements? We would encourage you to apply regardless – there’s every chance you’re exactly what we’re looking for here at ICON whether it is for this or other roles.
Are you a current ICON Employee? Please click here to apply
